


They Were Monsters

by Yinza



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Nibelheim (Compilation of FFVII), Vincent Valentine Is Sephiroth's Parent, may induce anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 43,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25452673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yinza/pseuds/Yinza
Summary: In the midst of his breakdown in the Shinra mansion and desperate for answers, Sephiroth breaks open the locked basement door to find the man who might be his father... But though Vincent presents him with possibilities he hadn't imagined, Sephiroth struggles with who to trust, and what path he might follow--Jenova's, or his own.
Relationships: Sephiroth & Vincent Valentine, Zack Fair & Sephiroth
Comments: 136
Kudos: 287





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sephiroth Meeting Vincent](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19940569) by [Yinza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yinza/pseuds/Yinza). 



His eyes burned. The pages stuck together. Sephiroth snapped the book shut and hurled it across the room.

Nothing. Hundreds of these volumes and nothing to give him the answers he really wanted.

What did it mean to be a Cetra? Where was he meant to go from here? Was it his mother behind that sealed door in the reactor, and could she really be alive in any meaningful way after so much time? Could _she_ tell him what he should do?

It was plain that Shinra was his enemy. They'd imprisoned and tortured her, they'd concealed the truth from him, they'd abused his gifts for their own petty human squabbles. They deserved to have their creation turn all his wrath back on them.

And yet...

There was Gast.

Gast had led this Project. He'd known _everything_ , and yet he was one of the few people Sephiroth had ever thought well of. Gast alone had treated him like a person, coming to read to him in his room or take him on walks through the Shinra building after hours, when no one would see him. It was with his small hand in Gast's that Sephiroth had first seen the sky through the building's windows. Seen the sprawl of the city below, more people than he could imagine. Gast had introduced him to the library, though he said those books weren't suited for children, and he'd bring in other stories. Stories that his young mind had lacked the context to understand. What were princes, or faeries? What were dragons, that they needed to be slain?

Monsters, Gast had said matter-of-factly. They were monsters.

Had Gast been a monster? Had Gast meant to tell him any of this, once he was older? Sephiroth had been only six, after all, when the professor had vanished from the lab, and Hojo had told him gleefully that he'd died, and that Shinra had assigned him to continue the work.

_Hojo_. There was a monster. Sephiroth imagined wringing the man's neck until his windpipe gave, until his neck snapped, letting go and watching his body drop as nothing more than a sack of meat.

But he wasn't _here_.

Growling, Sephiroth kicked a pile of discarded journals, sending a few flying out into the hall.

A laugh bubbled up from his chest unexpectedly. What was he doing? Throwing a tantrum, like a child? He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face, and stepped out into the hall to collect the wayward volumes.

That was when he saw the other door.

How had he forgotten about the other door? He must have walked past it a dozen times by now. A vague memory--it was locked.

He stepped over the fallen books and tried the handle again. What did a locked door have to mean to him? There could be something in there. There could be _answers_.

It was a heavy door, and even with his strength, it took more than one kick before the wood even began to splinter, but at last it tore free from the bolt entirely. Its hinges screeched as Sephiroth shoved it open.

Red eyes stared at him from the darkness. His Mako eyes adjusted quickly to make out the figure of a man, sitting up in a coffin. Messy black hair and a deep cowl obscured the man's face, but those features still telegraphed shock.

Sephiroth glanced around the room. More coffins, containing only skeletons. No books here. Nothing but this man who'd been locked up amid corpses.

Man, or monster?

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"I... My name is Vincent," said the stranger. "Are you... Who are you?"

It wasn't only shock on Vincent's face, but recognition. That wouldn't have been surprising--Sephiroth was used to being recognized--if not for a similar feeling nagging at his own mind, that there was something familiar about that face, too. But he was certain they'd never met. He would have remembered.

"Sephiroth," he answered. "What are you--"

"Sephiroth?" Vincent repeated, interrupting him. He rose from the coffin. "You are Sephiroth?"

"That's what I said."

"But you're... How old are you?"

"What difference does it make?" Sephiroth snapped, growing annoyed. Why was this stranger wasting his time with pointless questions? What a worthless discovery.

"I did not think I had slept so long... as to see you grown," said Vincent, and Sephiroth blinked. "Where is your mother? How is she?"

Sephiroth's hands unclenched. "My... You know my mother?"

"Yes," Vincent confirmed, and before he could speak another word, Sephiroth closed the distance between them and took him by the shoulders.

"Then you must tell me," he said. "Tell me about Jenova."

Vincent stared at him. His body had tensed at the contact, but he didn't pull away. Face-to-face with him now, the familiarity was undeniable. _Had_ they met? Perhaps when he'd been a child? But Vincent looked no older than him, so how could that be? How could he know Sephiroth's mother?

"Jenova?" Vincent repeated at last in confusion. "You want to know about Jenova?"

"Yes," Sephiroth insisted. "Tell me about my mother."

Vincent shook his head slowly. "But your mother's name... is Lucrecia."

Sephiroth's grip loosened. "Lucrecia?"

"You don't know her?"

"No..." Sephiroth pulled away and turned from Vincent, his mind reeling over one simple name. He put a hand to his head. "Hojo told me... that my mother's name was Jenova. That she died giving birth to me. But that was a lie, because Jenova wasn't human, and I wasn't born like a human..."

"You were," said Vincent, "born like a human, from a human mother. They implanted you with Jenova's cells, but that doesn't change those facts."

Sephiroth glanced back at him. Could he be lying, too? Trying to impose some new reality on him, just when he'd finally uncovered the truth about himself? What for? Who was this man and what drove him?

"How do you know me?" he demanded. "Why do you... What do you have to do with all of this?"

"I was... a friend of your mother's," said Vincent. "She was a biologist, working with Professor Gast, and I was a Turk, assigned to their protection for the duration of their work here."

"You can't possibly be old enough for that."

Vincent expression grew stony. The fingers of his left hand--a hand that Sephiroth realized was not flesh, but metal, sharp and claw-like--twitched. He lifted his other hand and ran his fingers over his own face, as though he didn't know what it looked like. "...this, too, must be Hojo's doing," he said. "I was twenty-seven when you were born. It wasn't long after that that he locked me away."

"Hojo put you here? Why?"

Vincent hesitated. "I suppose I was a threat to the Project," he decided. "Lucrecia... became very ill after your birth. She couldn't care for you, and I worried that was just how Hojo wanted it. That he would let her die to keep you from her. I wanted to stop him, but if you don't even know her, then..."

"I've never heard of her," said Sephiroth. "You failed."

"...I'm sorry."

"You're sorry?" Sephiroth repeated. "Is that all you have to offer me? An apology and a story about a woman I never knew existed? But what more could I have expected from a stranger I found in a coffin? Maybe you aren't even real..."

"Sephiroth... When was the last time you slept?"

Sephiroth gestured vaguely. How long had he been in this basement now? There was no way to measure the time.

"I know you have questions," Vincent went on gently, "and I promise I will help you find what answers I can. But I think you should rest, first."

"Rest will get me nowhere."

"It will give your mind time to settle. You might find you think more clearly, and... you'll know I am no hallucination."

Sephiroth wanted to argue. Did Vincent seek to keep him from searching further? To lull him into a vulnerable state? Maybe he'd presented a different sort of threat to the Project. Maybe he hadn't wanted it to happen at all, maybe he wanted to put an end to it, to Sephiroth. Maybe he was an enemy to the Cetra and Sephiroth ought to kill him and move on.

If there were no more answers in this place, then he would go to the reactor. He would find Jenova and _she_ would tell him what this stranger could not.

But he did feel... so tired. And he could see no threat in the way Vincent watched him. He only looked... sad.

"A few hours," Sephiroth decided brusquely. "And I'm..." He nearly said he would lock Vincent away again, but he'd broken the door, hadn't he? There was no confining him here. "My men will watch you," he finished instead.

"All right," said Vincent.

Sephiroth made the man walk ahead of him out of the basement, back to the mansion bedroom where he'd found the secret stair. A pale light drifted through the windows; it was early morning.

The surviving infantryman waited outside the room; Sephiroth couldn't recall if he'd posted him there or not. The boy looked up with a start on seeing him return with Vincent. What was his name again? Didn't matter.

"Go find Zack," Sephiroth told him. "I've got a job for him."

"Y-yes, sir," said the boy, and he hurried off.

"You're with SOLDIER," Vincent observed.

"Mm," Sephiroth confirmed absently. He hadn't expected even that dusty bed to look so inviting. He resisted the urge to sit down on it, for fear he would be asleep before Zack showed up.

Vincent went to the windows, squinting out into the daylight. "How long _has_ it been?" he wondered. "Twenty years?"

"Twenty-five," said Sephiroth. "I am twenty-five."

"I wish..." Vincent began, but he trailed off without finishing, and Sephiroth didn't push him to. It didn't matter what he wished. His wishes weren't reality.

The boy returned with Zack, who stopped in the doorway to stare at him.

"You look like hell, man," he said. "And who's this guy?"

"This is Vincent," Sephiroth said tiredly, knowing it was no explanation at all. "Don't let him out of your sight. I... am going to rest."

Zack hesitated, but occasionally, very occasionally, he knew when not to ask questions. "Got it," he said. "Uh, Vincent? You wanna come with me?"

Sephiroth shut the door behind the three of them, and his weight swayed forward, his forehead pressing into the wood. The pressure didn't feel real.

He pushed himself back and turned around. Finding the bed, he let himself collapse onto it. His eyes fell shut, and sleep overtook him.

* * *

It was dark when he woke. Not an overcast sky, but the dark of night. A streetlamp was on in the town below. He'd slept much longer than a few hours.

His body felt heavy as he dragged himself out of bed, and his head throbbed, but his thoughts came clearer.

Vincent... Sephiroth didn't know whether to trust him, but his story didn't exist in a vacuum. If there had ever been a Turk by that name, or a scientist called Lucrecia, there would be record of it at Headquarters. There was a phone at the inn, though whether anyone would relate to him the truth of the matter... How much of Shinra knew what he was? How many of them participated in the deception?

No one was waiting outside the bedroom when he left it, and Sephiroth went first to the bathroom down the hall. Catching himself in the mirror, he could see what Zack had meant; rolls of dust had caught in the tangles of his hair, decades-old grime smudged his forehead, and even after sleeping, dark circles shadowed his eyes.

He was about to bend down and wash his face when he stopped, and looked harder.

It couldn't be...

But he tried to imagine himself with dark hair, red eyes. Vincent's features weren't familiar because he somehow recalled meeting the man as an infant. They were an imperfect mirror of his own.

The bathroom door slammed as he left it, and he stalked the halls of the mansion until he found them. Zack and the boy sat in the candlelit dining room with the remains of a meal while Vincent stood staring at something on the wall behind them. He turned as Sephiroth entered.

"My mother's ' _friend_ '?" Sephiroth demanded without preamble.

Zack glanced between them uncertainly. The boy pushed to his feet as if to leave. Maybe Sephiroth should have ordered them to, but what privacy did he really have when others knew more about him than he did?

Vincent met Sephiroth's gaze without flinching. "...not only her friend," he admitted.

"All this time," Sephiroth said bitterly, "I thought _he_ was the unfortunate bearer of that title. My _father_." He scoffed, shaking his head. "Is this any better an option? A freak? A freak who lied to me."

"Seph?" said Zack. He got up from the table and took a step towards him, but Sephiroth held out a hand.

"Don't start," he said.

"It was never my intention to lie to you," said Vincent. "I only thought, a stranger, claiming to be your father..." He shook his head. "I don't know for certain, anyway."

"Do you suppose I look anything like him?"

"...not really."

Sephiroth fisted his hand in his hair. Gods, his head hurt.

Could this man really be his father? Hojo had never claimed the title nor taken the role, but rather he'd claimed _ownership_ ; Sephiroth was his property, his creation, and no one had disputed that. He was the one who had given Sephiroth the one scrap he thought he'd known about his mother, but dismissed any questions about his father, as though the entire concept were unnecessary. It had been enough that he thought he'd put the pieces together.

Sephiroth glanced back at Vincent, and then his gaze slid past him to the picture he'd been staring at when Sephiroth came in. A framed wedding portrait. Sephiroth hadn't paid it any attention before, but he realized now that the man looked like Hojo. And the woman...

"This is your mother," said Vincent, catching the direction of his gaze. "I can see her in you, too."

Sephiroth stared into the portrait. Her cheekbones, the shape of her mouth, even the way her hair fell...

"This is insane," he said.

"I'm sure it's a lot to take in," said Vincent. "Believe me, I... am struggling with it myself."

At that, Sephiroth barked out a laugh. If all of this was true, then his _father_ had been in some sort of hibernation all his life, and was scarcely any older than he was. Was Vincent meant to have some parental wisdom for him? Be a voice of experience and guidance? How laughable.

" _You_ 're struggling," he said. "Oh, I'm certain it's disorienting to miss twenty-five years, but it was hell to live them. Twenty-five years knowing nothing but scraps of my origins, which you've undone in moments. I knew not a single thing about myself."

"You know now," said Vincent. "I promised you, I'll answer anything you want."

"You don't have the answers I want. You have another story."

"This one is the truth."

Sephiroth stared him down, and he never looked away. Could he trust anything about the steadiness of that gaze? Did it mean anything?

He scoffed and turned for the door. Zack started after him, and Sephiroth shot him a look over his shoulder. "Back off, Zack. I'm not in the mood for you."

"You're in _some_ kind of mood, that's for sure. Where're you headed?"

"That's no concern of yours."

As he took another step, Zack caught his arm. Sephiroth grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the doorframe.

"I said, _back off_."

"Zack!" The boy was on his feet again.

Zack waved a hand at him. "I'm okay, Cloud," he managed, sounding winded. "You wanna do me a favor, actually? Why don't you take our new friend and check if the inn's kitchen is still open? I'm betting Sephiroth hasn't eaten in a while."

Sephiroth slowly released him, taking a step back. He hadn't meant to shove him so hard.

Vincent faltered, looking to Sephiroth. "But, I..."

"Go," Sephiroth said hoarsely. "Please."

Vincent nodded slowly, and reluctantly walked out the door past them. Cloud looked uneasy, and he paused as he reached Zack.

"I hope you know what you're doing," he said.

"Trust me," said Zack. "I've got this."

The two of them disappeared down the hallway, leaving Sephiroth standing just outside the dining room with Zack. Sephiroth threw him a look, then stepped back inside and let himself drop into the nearest chair.

"Sure you don't want to throw me around some more?" asked Zack. "Or maybe you wanna go downstairs and beat up some more bookshelves?"

"Do you have a point?" Sephiroth asked tiredly.

Zack approached slowly, staying in his line of sight, and sat down at the table with him. "I'm worried about you, man. You said you wanted some space, so I gave you some space, but... it seems like you're just driving yourself nuts."

"What would you do, Zack, if you learned your parents weren't really your parents? If they and everyone else had been lying to you about your origins, manipulating you to their own purposes?"

"I dunno," said Zack. "That's... a tough one to wrap your head around. I'd probably be pretty upset. But, you know not _everyone_ 's been lying to you, right? I sure didn't know about any of this."

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes. Zack was the last person anyone would suspect of subterfuge, but maybe that was the point. What if it was all an act? All those overtures of friendship, just ploys to get close to him? He was certainly more persistant than he ought to have been.

"What?" said Zack. "You're really gonna suspect me now, too?"

"Is there some reason you should be above suspicion?"

"I'm- I mean... Aren't we friends?"

Sephiroth looked back at him, unable to discern any ulterior motive in that face. What if he was just a kind person, a simple fool? Couldn't Sephiroth allow that those existed?

With a sigh, he let his head drop into his hand. "Who knows," he said. "I don't... know what to think about anything, right now."

"...you wanna try talking through it?" Zack ventured.

"Talking? With you?"

"Hey, I've got ears. And plenty of dumb questions, you know that. Maybe it'll help if you've got to explain every little thing."

Sephiroth hesitated. Zack _was_ the closest thing he had to a friend, but this wasn't something they did. Certainly Zack would talk to _him_ about anything that happened to cross his mind, but Sephiroth didn't make a habit of reciprocating.

"That, or I can offer you a hug. Your choice."

Sephiroth snorted.

"Yeah, I didn't think option two was gonna go over so well."

"Did Vincent tell you anything?" Sephiroth wondered.

Zack shook his head. "Nothing but questions out of that guy."

"What did he want to know?"

"About you, mostly. I didn't tell him anything that wasn't public knowledge already. SOLDIER, war hero, _huge_ fan club..."

"Do you always have to do that?" said Sephiroth.

"Do what?"

"Turn everything into a joke."

Zack shrugged. "Just trying to lighten the mood a little. Besides, if you really hated it, you could've picked somebody else for this mission, right?"

Sephiroth didn't answer. He could have. He hadn't.

Maybe they really were friends. Was that what friendship was? Wanting someone around?

"So if that guy's your dad," Zack went on, "then I gotta say, you really lucked out on the aging genes."

"I don't think I'll inherit that, Zack. It seems he became an experiment himself, after I was born." But, _would_ he age like a human? The Cetra were ancestors to humans, but had they had the same lifespan? He'd started life with grey hair, maybe he would die young.

"Well," said Zack, "you wanna start at the beginning? Tell me about this Jenova Project thing. Let's see if we can figure it out together, okay?"

Sephiroth met his gaze with skepticism. If he hadn't been able to make sense of it, he doubted _Zack_ would, but... Could it hurt, to review the facts? Maybe in saying it all aloud, he would realize something he hadn't before.

At the least, it wouldn't all be stuck inside of his head, a riddle with no answer slowly driving him mad.

"All right," he said. "From the beginning..."


	2. Chapter 2

Vincent paused in the hallway out of sight of the dining room, listening to the beginnings of a conversation he ached to be a part of. He had already missed so much, too much.

But Sephiroth wasn't ready. He needed time, time with someone who knew him, someone he trusted. That wasn't Vincent. They were strangers to one another.

Lucrecia's son. _Their_ son. He expected Sephiroth would want it confirmed, but Vincent had little doubt now, looking into those features. They had made a child together... and that child was already grown, in the blink of an eye. How had twenty-five years passed him by so easily? How could he have slept while Hojo raised his and Lucrecia's child? What had happened to Gast?

"Come on," said the young infantryman beside him, Cloud. He looked no more eager to leave than Vincent, for his own reasons.

What _were_ the chances Sephiroth did any real harm to Zack? His voice sounded calm now, but Vincent knew little about the sort of man he was. Hard to say if the volatility of his mood was simply the product of the situation, or something he'd inherited from his mother.

Vincent followed Cloud down the hall without asking. He had already pressed Sephiroth's men about him, and gleaned two things from their reticence: Sephiroth was a very private person, and his men had a great deal of respect for him.

The mansion was dark. Most of its lights had failed years ago, and Cloud carried a flashlight to augment the pale light shining in through the windows. On his own, Vincent wouldn't have needed it. The clarity of his own vision unnerved him, the way even the deepest shadows shrouded nothing from him. He had had the chance, by now, to look himself in the mirror. The eyes staring back at him had been the wrong color.

What had Hojo done to him? Something seemed to buzz in his veins. Temporary, or part of his new reality? He was at a loss to define what normal should feel like after twenty-five years of slumber. No human body would have survived so long on nothing, but even now he didn't feel hunger. He only felt... wrong.

They had crossed the foyer, he realized, turning away from the front door.

"Are we not going to the inn?" he asked Cloud.

"We are," said Cloud, "but let's go out the back."

"Why?"

"Tifa's... Some of the villagers are standing guard out front. All this stuff, makes them uneasy."

Sephiroth's behavior, Vincent gathered. He hadn't come here of his own accord, but on orders, to accomplish a task which he had clearly abandoned in light of his discovery.

And who had given those orders? Even if Sephiroth's commanding officer was somehow oblivious to his origins, others in the company knew what he might find in Nibelheim. Who had wanted him to know, and why?

Other questions he doubted Cloud could answer for him.

"You think I'll make them uneasy as well," he observed instead.

Cloud glanced up at him. "This mansion's been abandoned since before I was born," he said. "So yeah."

Since before he was born. Vincent thought of the children he and Lucrecia had seen playing in the village; they would be grown now, too, perhaps raising families of their own. Cloud had made it clear enough he hailed from Nibelheim; had Vincent seen his parents among those youths?

"What do they say about it?" Vincent wondered. "Do they remember the people who lived here?"

Cloud shrugged. "They were from Shinra. That's all anybody says." He hesitated. "Sephiroth said... you missed twenty-five years."

"...yes," Vincent confirmed. "I was part of the team who lived here."

How long had the others remained here, after Hojo had sealed him away? What had he told them of Vincent's disappearance? What had he told Lucrecia? Or, had he never had to tell her? Had she died in this mansion, while Vincent slumbered on?

In his nightmares, he'd seen her death countless times and in countless ways, but he didn't _know_ what had happened to her. He didn't know if she'd succumbed to the illness ravaging her when he'd left her side. He didn't know if Hojo had decided to punish her, too, for the affair. He didn't know if, by some chance, she'd survived that day, only to die later, because he wasn't there to protect her.

His hand curled into a fist, fingers pressing into his palm through the glove. A glance told him his left hand mirrored the gesture, but he couldn't feel it. That arm was a foreign weight pulling on his shoulder, though it responded as readily as his flesh-and-blood limb.

Cloud was watching him. "Are you really Sephiroth's father?" he asked.

"I believe I may be," Vincent answered.

Cloud regarded him a moment longer, shook his head, and continued on. If he didn't know what to make of that, he wasn't the only one.

They stepped into the back hallway, and Cloud jimmied open one of the windows. He settled his helmet firmly back on his head before climbing out into the yard, and Vincent followed.

The pines that surrounded the house had grown so much taller. Vincent reached out to touch the trunks as they passed, but their rough bark failed to bring home the reality of the years.

Cloud shut off his flashlight as they rounded the side of the house, but Vincent had no difficulty spotting the two figures who stood watch just outside the front gate. He and Cloud made for the corner of the yard farthest from them.

There was someone there, too. A young woman, sitting atop the fence with her legs dangling. "What're you doing sneaking out?" she asked, and Cloud tripped, catching himself against the fence. He hadn't seen her.

"And who's that?" the girl went on, jerking her chin at Vincent.

Vincent looked to Cloud, but he seemed at a loss for words.

The girl waited a beat. "Another company secret?" she wondered. "Maybe I'd better get my father."

"W-wait!" Cloud stammered. He hesitated, and then went on, trying to disguise his voice. "It's, uh... I'm not authorized to tell you. But I promise you're in no danger."

The girl cocked her head at him. "Why're you talking like that?"

"What do you mean? This is... just my voice."

"No, it's not," she said with an easy laugh. "Look, just tell me what you're up to and maybe I'll help you out."

"Just... getting some food for Sephiroth."

"From the inn? I'm pretty sure Birgit went home for the night."

Cloud faltered.

"I'm a pretty good cook, you know," the girl went on. "If you're that desperate you're sneaking out windows."

Cloud said nothing, so Vincent decided to step in. "We would appreciate that," he said, "if it isn't too much trouble."

"Oh, so you do talk." She glanced towards the men standing watch and then motioned the two of them over the fence. "Come on. We'll take the long way so they don't see us."

They followed her between the pines back behind the inn, through its narrow side yard, and across the square behind the water tower. At a glance, the village looked precisely the same. Only small changes, brought on by upkeep over the years. Fences replaced, shutters repainted. Vincent could just make out the village gate at the far end of the street, where Lucrecia had told him it was over.

The girl led them to the largest of the houses that bordered the square. Vincent had been inside of it a few times, when the mayor of the time had invited their team for dinner. He recognized the grandfather clock standing in the foyer, but most of the furniture was different, or maybe just arranged differently, to suit the needs of different people.

Shutting the door behind them, the girl turned to face them. "So," she said, "Sephiroth sent the two of you to bring him dinner? I can't tell if that's any weirder than him not eating for four days."

Cloud shrugged.

"Don't you ever take off that helmet? You're in someone's house, you know." He took a step back at her accusatory tone, but she just rolled her eyes and shifted her attention to Vincent. "And you. That's sure not a Shinra uniform. Where did you come from?"

"I am... an acquaintance of Sephiroth's," Vincent decided, "though I left Shinra some years ago. My name is Vincent."

She gave him a look of appraisal. "Vincent, huh? Well, I'm Tifa."

She stuck out her hand, and, not wanting to offend her, Vincent carefully took it. The contact was jarring, though not as overwhelming as when Sephiroth had grabbed him. His mind may have registered the passage of time as nothing but a blur of nightmares, but his body seemed keenly aware of how long it had been since he'd touched another living being. It made even this brief handshake intensely intimate, and he released Tifa's hand gratefully.

"I'm glad at least one of you has manners," Tifa said, and she jerked her head towards Cloud. " _This_ one's been here a whole week, and this is the first time I've heard him talk. Kind of rude, don't you think?"

"I am sure he has his reasons," Vincent offered, and they were obvious enough to him. Clearly they knew each other, but Cloud was hiding behind the anonymity of the helmet to avoid a conversation. She intimidated him. Probably, she intimidated a lot of boys her age.

What had Sephiroth been like at their age? Had he had any opportunity for crushes, rejections, first kisses? Had he had anyone to turn to for advice?

Tifa shrugged and motioned them along as she crossed the foyer into the kitchen. "So, does the Great Sephiroth have any preferences?"

"Dunno," said Cloud.

"Guess I'll just make what I feel like then," Tifa decided.

He and Cloud hung back near the doorway, keeping out of her way, and Vincent's eyes swept over the room. Much about it was the same, but the table that stood in its center was a smaller one, set only for three; as welcoming as Tifa was, it was no longer a home accustomed to entertaining.

When they had first arrived in Nibelheim, Lucrecia had hung that wedding portrait in the mansion's dining room, put her china away in its cupboards, and settled an arrangement of fresh flowers on the table--but they had used it so rarely, and Vincent couldn't recall a single night when all of them had eaten there together. The dinners at the mayor's house stood out distinct in his memory. Seated across the table from Lucrecia, trying not to share glances with Hojo there, when he was already irritable enough at being pulled away from his research, just looking for an excuse to lash out at someone.

They weren't good memories, but he thought of her in this space, and he longed for them anyway. To reach out across the table and touch her hand, Hojo be damned. He should have been bolder. He should have shown her that he was willing to fight for her, for everything that she wanted.

"So, is... is Sephiroth sick, or something?" Tifa asked of a sudden, bringing Vincent back to the present. "Everyone's really worried."

Her son. Their son. Was there still time, to do right by _him_?

"I can't... really talk about it," Cloud answered.

"There must be _something_ you can tell me," said Tifa. "Sephiroth seemed upset, after the reactor inspection. And Zangan says... maybe you all _really_ came to cover up what's going on up there. Maybe, you're not here to protect us."

"Of course we're here to..." Cloud began, but he didn't finish.

Tifa's concerns weren't unfounded. Shinra had operated that way in Vincent's time; sometimes witnesses to the company's mistakes were simply... erased. No one had ever heard of Nibelheim then, and that had made it an ideal location for an experimental reactor, and for the Jenova Project. But, Vincent didn't think the company had decided to erase it just yet.

"No one was ordered here to harm the village," Vincent offered into the silence. "Sephiroth... has had some troubling news. He needs time to work through it."

Tifa looked at him, her brow furrowed. "Troubling news... Is that why you came?"

"I... hope to be of some help to him, yes," said Vincent. If Sephiroth would let him. If it wasn't too little, too late.

How could he be a father to a man who had seen nearly as many years as he had?

"Well... I hope it all works out," said Tifa.

She finished her cooking, and transferred the meal to a covered casserole dish. She handed it to Cloud.

"There you are. Let me know if there's anything more I can do to help, okay?"

Cloud nodded. "Okay."

Tifa made sure the coast was clear across the square, and they snuck back the way they had come. Vincent should have found it silly, all this stealth for a simple meal, but it was hardly unfamiliar. How many times had he and Lucrecia met in secret? Notes slipped into pockets and kisses stolen in the halls. He had climbed through his share of windows, for her.

They could hear Sephiroth and Zack still talking as they approached the dining room, and Cloud cleared his throat loudly before they drew close enough to eavesdrop. Sephiroth fell silent, and Zack met them in the doorway.

"Hey, buddy," he said. "That doesn't look like it came from the inn."

"Uh, it was closed," said Cloud. "The kitchen, I mean."

"Uh-huh..." Zack's knowing expression said that the situation with Tifa was hardly news to him. "You're gonna tell me all about that in a minute."

"...how is Sephiroth?" Vincent asked.

"'bout ready to hear you out," Zack answered. He looked Vincent over and then nodded, stepping aside to let him through. Vincent took the casserole dish from Cloud, and as he entered the dining room, Zack added, "Make sure he actually eats that, will you?"

"You _certainly_ aren't my mother, Zack," Sephiroth said dryly.

Zack shrugged, and then he slung an arm around Cloud's shoulder. "Shall we?"

The two of them disappeared down the hallway, leaving Vincent alone with his son.

His _son_.

There was so much distrust in Sephiroth's gaze as he watched Vincent approach. Vincent set the dish down in front of him, and Sephiroth lifted its lid, but even then he never took his eyes from Vincent's face.

He hadn't gotten those eyes from either one of them. The color of Mako, with strange, slit pupils. But the shape of them was much like his own, and those lips were his mother's, the same frown as when she'd been displeased with him.

And yet, the thoughts of an entirely unique person ran through that mind now, thoughts Vincent could only begin to guess at. Years and years of experiences had shaped him into something far more than his origins. Unfortunately, it was plain that those experiences didn't allow trust to come easy to him, and learning who he'd become would take time.

"Sit down," said Sephiroth, "and we'll see what sort of answers you have."

Vincent sat, letting his hands rest across the tabletop, one flesh, one not. It made a soft clunk against the wood, and he glanced down at the table. Zack had scrubbed the worst of the dust from it earlier, but he hadn't been thorough, leaving thick layers streaked across the far end. Time had touched everything in Nibelheim, in its own way, but what had it shaped Vincent into? What if Sephiroth had a monster now, for a father? A freak, as he'd said? Was it any better?

He supposed it would be up to Sephiroth to determine. He had promised answers, and though he anticipated giving them would be painful, they made up only the smallest fraction of what he owed.

"What do you want to know?" Vincent asked.


	3. Chapter 3

Sephiroth studied the man across from him, and the way Vincent studied him in turn, as though reading his mother's features in his face. Sephiroth wasn't ready to accept as fact that this man was his father, but the possibility... had to be explored.

"You were my mother's lover," said Sephiroth. Let them start there, with the extent of this man's connection to him. "Was it serious?"

Vincent hesitated, a faint knot appearing in his brow. "I thought it was," he said. "For my part... I loved her in a way I have never loved anyone. I would have done anything for her."

"But?"

"...I asked her to leave Hojo, and run away with me. She refused. She said, I didn't understand her ambition, that her work was too important to abandon. At least he understood that, she said."

Sephiroth said nothing, his hands clenching into fists atop the table. So she'd shared that quality of Hojo's, had she? His mother?

"I thought many times after that," Vincent went on, "if there was some plan I might have enacted on my own. To discredit Hojo, to make him disappear... But, it wasn't what she wanted."

"You should have killed him," Sephiroth stated.

Vincent met his gaze. "Probably."

"You seem to think that this Lucrecia would have done better by me. Was I not the product of _her_ ambition as well?"

Vincent shook his head. "Whatever her faults, Lucrecia loved you. I believe she would have been a mother to you first, and a scientist second."

And what would _that_ have looked like? Sephiroth wondered, but he stopped himself from exploring the thought. He needed to make sense of his reality, not dwell on might-have-beens. "Well, she never had the chance to be anything to me. The fact of the matter is, it fell to Hojo, and he only considers himself a scientist, despite his lack of talent."

"Was Gast not involved?" Vincent wondered.

"He... died," said Sephiroth. "According to Hojo, anyway. When I was still small."

"That's a pity. He was... a kinder man than Hojo, at least."

"You didn't care for him?"

Vincent thought for a moment. "He disappointed me," he decided. "I thought that human experimentation was a line he wouldn't cross. Without his approval, the Project wouldn't have moved forward."

Sephiroth hesitated. "Was I... conceived for the experiment? Or simply a convenient situation?"

"I..." Vincent faltered, stopped, and began again. "Certainly it was never my intention. As for Lucrecia, I can't be sure. I knew she wanted a child. I knew they had discussed the concept of a human hybrid. Whether she made the decision before or after she discovered she was pregnant... I don't know."

"You were against it," Sephiroth observed, "but she ignored your wishes."

"She said it was her decision, and I think... she believed you were Hojo's child. Either way, I could hardly have disputed it without revealing the affair, and putting her in danger. So I... did nothing."

Sephiroth studied him, tapping a finger against the table. "Earlier you said that you tried to stop Hojo. That he perceived you as a threat to the Project. How can that be if you did nothing?"

"I acted too late," said Vincent, again that faraway look as he studied Sephiroth's face. "When Lucrecia fell ill... Gast was away at Headquarters, so I went to Hojo. I demanded he help her. I told him... that if he didn't, then I would fight to claim you. That any test would show he wasn't your father."

"But you didn't _know_ ," said Sephiroth.

Vincent shook his head. "No. But I was desperate, and angry, and stupid. I should have anticipated his reaction. I should have seen the gun before he drew it. I didn't... and now, here we are. Twenty-five years later, strangers to one another. I... have no right to say I am your father. It's meaningless."

Was it? Vincent hadn't thought of him as an experiment, but a child. Would _he_ have held Sephiroth's hand, read him faerie tales?

What-ifs again. That time was long past. What did Vincent offer him now, in the present, as a father? Honesty? As stories went, it was plausible. Vincent _sounded_ earnest.

So then, had he had two human parents after all? _Hybrid_ , Vincent had called him. He was of two worlds. Whatever it meant to be a Cetra... But then, he'd never really understood what it meant to be human, either. There were no guidelines for what he was, who he was.

Sephiroth realized he was staring absently at the dish in front of him, and at last he stabbed a fork into it. Whether it would help his headache or not, he didn't know, but it was a necessary biological process, wasn't it? Human or Cetra. No need to deliberate over _that_.

He wasn't used to making choices. All his life, he'd followed the path Shinra had laid out for him. The compliant lab rat turned SOLDIER trainee turned war hero, accepting the freedoms they allowed him as enough. He'd never known how to imagine something outside of that.

There was no going back after this, but he didn't know the way forward. It was unwritten. Something no one could tell him.

No one?

"What _do_ you know of Jenova?" he asked Vincent. "There is a sealed door at the reactor with her name on it. Is she kept there?"

"In my time, yes," said Vincent with a shake of his head. "But Jenova... is only a specimen. Cells preserved in Mako."

"Gast's notes suggest she's in some sort of stasis," Sephiroth insisted. "Still alive."

Vincent frowned. "You want to see it," he concluded.

"Yes. Maybe she is what you said--nothing more than a collection of cells. But if she's more than that, then I can't allow her to remain there. She is... still my mother, after a fashion." And perhaps they had more in common than he did with Lucrecia, or with Vincent. She'd been held there for decades, used by Hojo, denied any choices. The only one of her kind.

Vincent let out a soft sigh. "I suspect the code for that door has changed in the interim, but we may find our way in. But, let us do it tomorrow. Your men told me you were dispatched here because of a monster problem. The journey will be better in daylight, with more rest."

"...very well," Sephiroth conceded. "In the morning, we'll go."

Zack would come, too, he supposed, picking at his meal. He wasn't about to trust his back to Vincent. Not yet. He had no proof, only words and an uncanny resemblance. Maybe he would contact Headquarters before they set out, and see if he could unearth anything to support Vincent's story. Who to request it from? Who did he think he could trust?

"You're left-handed," Vincent remarked softly, out of nowhere.

Sephiroth glanced up. "What of it?"

"So was Lucrecia," said Vincent. "I... Would it be all right if I asked _you_ some questions?"

"What sort of questions?"

"About you."

Sephiroth scoffed. "You know more about me than I do."

Vincent shook his head. "I know your origins. I don't know you. How long have you been in SOLDIER? Where do you live? How do you spend your time?"

Sephiroth regarded him thoughtfully. It was hardly the first time he'd heard questions like that, and typically he dismissed them, knowing his answers would be lacking. His life was empty of so many of the experiences common to normal people, the experiences they used to relate to one another. They wouldn't relate to that emptiness.

But it was different with Vincent, wasn't it? He wasn't trying to build a connection out of shared experiences. He wanted to fill a hole in his knowledge. The knowledge of his son. If Sephiroth really was his son.

"...I joined SOLDIER, officially, when I was fifteen," said Sephiroth. "My combat skills already rivaled those of a First Class SOLDIER, but I lacked the command abilities, so I shadowed other officers, for a while." He hadn't known how to deal with people; he still didn't, but he'd learned to play the part they wanted for him. "When I was seventeen, they sent me to the front."

"A war with Wutai," said Vincent. "Zack mentioned it."

Sephiroth nodded. "It ended eighteen months ago. Wutai fell to forces under my command."

"And now they send you on missions like this one."

"I prefer the small assignments. Villages like this one don't have the resources for unnecessary fanfare."

Vincent's expression softened. "I suppose I'm glad it hasn't gone to your head."

"Zack thinks it wouldn't kill me to enjoy it a little."

"The two of you are friends, not just colleagues?"

"Maybe," said Sephiroth. "...probably."

"Good," said Vincent.

"...it's strange to hear that, from a Turk."

Vincent tilted his head. "Is it?"

"The way you value connection, and what you want for me, even though I may after all be the son of your rival... The Turks I know only live to follow orders."

"I didn't used to be any different," Vincent admitted. "But... I felt I was protecting a way of life. For people who were better at taking advantage of it than I was."

Sephiroth nodded slowly. Maybe they did have something in common. "I've... never been good at that either."

"Have you ever been in love?" Vincent wondered.

"No," said Sephiroth. There was one thing he knew with absolute certainty.

"I hope you experience it, one day. It changes things."

Sephiroth squinted at him. "It worked out terribly for you. Didn't it?"

"I suppose there's no denying that. I lost Lucrecia. I lost... too many years. My humanity, probably. But..." Vincent lifted his gaze from his clawed hand to look at Sephiroth. "There is you."

"Me?"

"You may be the product of scientific ambition... but I believe you are also the product of the love we shared. That doesn't strike me as a terrible outcome."

"I... don't understand it," Sephiroth confessed.

"It feels simple, yet difficult to explain. I could never have imagined you, and that... astounds me. How whole you are."

Whole? Sephiroth thought, taken aback. There was nothing about him that felt whole.

"I hope..." Vincent went on, "that you will allow me to know you. There is no way I can redress the years I missed, but I want to be a part of your present."

Sephiroth didn't know how to respond. Maybe Zack was open with his affection, but it was casual with him, an easy camaraderie he extended to anyone who would tolerate it. Everything about Vincent's manner suggested this was neither easy nor casual for him. There was a depth and intensity to the feelings he expressed.

But, wasn't it only because he'd loved Sephiroth's mother? Because he wanted some remnant of her to hold onto? How long would Vincent strive to be a part of his life, once he realized any similarities were only skin-deep?

And, did Sephiroth even want him around? What use did he have for a father now?

"...we'll see," he said cautiously.

Vincent, who had been leaning forward slightly, sat back now, dropping his gaze. "I understand," he said quietly. "I've hardly proven myself to you."

"You haven't even proven you really are my father," Sephiroth pointed out.

"Of course I'll submit to a test."

"Nibelheim doesn't have the facilities," Sephiroth said with a frown. But to trust that test to a Shinra lab...

Vincent must have guessed his thoughts, because he offered, "Perhaps Cosmo Canyon would? Gast knew a scientist there who had broken with Shinra, and... No, he must be dead by now. But he had colleagues."

"I suppose it might do."

"But... Even if the test shows I am not your biological father..." Vincent faltered. "It doesn't change my intent. I would be a friend to you, if I could."

"And if I tell you I want nothing more to do with you?" Sephiroth wondered.

Vincent's mouth pressed into a line, and then he shook his head. "It will take more than that to be rid of me."

"I don't _need_ a father," Sephiroth stated, "or whatever you are to me."

"Perhaps not. But you are allowed to have things you don't need."

Sephiroth sat back with an incredulous laugh. "Do you have such a high opinion of yourself?" he asked.

Vincent shook his head. "No. But I think you've _wanted_ family for a long time. I want to offer you that."

Sephiroth glared at him, for the presumption of knowing him that well. But...

He wasn't wrong.

Hadn't he imagined, when he was small, that his mother was still alive and that she might come to rescue him, as people did in faerie tales? He'd given up imagining a very long time ago, and the longing had given way to envy, and then to bitter resentment. People who were close to their families, who relied on them, were weak. They were beneath him.

But the moment he'd seen that door marked Jenova, before he could understand what it meant, there had been that tiny flash of hope. That he'd found her. That he could belong to someone--not in the sense that he had belonged to Hojo, but in the way that people _belonged_ with each other. Kinship. Connection.

And in the next moment, he'd known that wasn't what lay behind that door at all. He hadn't had a mother who'd died giving birth to him, that wasn't what Jenova was. He didn't belong to anyone except in the way he had belonged to Hojo.

Vincent had reopened the possibility. He was insisting, regardless of blood, that he and Sephiroth could belong to one another. It might be stupid to accept that so readily, but would it be weakness to accept it in time?

"And what would we do together," Sephiroth asked, "as father and son?"

Vincent spread his hands across the table. "Anything," he said.

"Did _you_ want a child?" Sephiroth wanted to know.

"I hadn't considered it before Lucrecia spoke of it," Vincent admitted, "but then... it became something I wanted. You were wanted, Sephiroth."

Of course Shinra had wanted him, but to be wanted for _who_ he was rather than _what_ he was...

Instinct told him to reject it. It wasn't real. It wouldn't last.

"I've... heard enough," he said, "for one day." He stood, pushing his hair out of his face. "I think it's time I returned to the inn."

Vincent stood with him. "Should I accompany you?" he asked.

That simple question made Sephiroth stop and consider Vincent's predicament for the first time. A man out of time. Nibelheim likely hadn't changed much, but the rest of the world certainly had, and Vincent knew of it only what they'd told him. His place in it was as uncertain as Sephiroth's.

Sephiroth imagined leaving him here among the dust and cobwebs, as though he were just another relic. A secret to be abandoned and forgotten all over again. Sephiroth might choose never to return for him, to reject everything he represented.

"I think we've both spent long enough in this place," he decided.

Vincent nodded. Sephiroth blew out the candles, throwing the dining room into darkness, but neither of them had any trouble finding their way out of it.

Sephiroth stepped out of the mansion into the night air for the first time in days. He wouldn't call it fresh--the metallic scent of Mako still lingered--but not so stagnant as the air inside. A light breeze brushed across his skin, blowing hair into his face.

Zangan and Brian Lockhart stood just outside the gate, as though waiting for him. "What have you been up to in there?" Lockhart demanded as he pushed it open to step through. "Who is that?"

Sephiroth ignored the questions. "Tomorrow we'll return to the reactor to complete the mission," he said. "You have nothing to worry about."

"You Shinra and your secrets..." muttered Lockhart.

He had no idea, Sephiroth thought wryly. "I have decided to cut ties with Shinra," he said, "but I will still do what I came here to do."

The two men exchanged astonished glances.

"Cut ties to Shinra?" Zangan repeated. "What did you find up there?"

What reason did he have now to protect company secrets? Especially Hojo's? "Your monster problem was manufactured. Shinra is performing experiments at the reactor."

"What?" said Lockhart. "You don't mean... Shinra _made_ the monsters... on purpose?"

"That's exactly what I mean."

Zangan gave a low whistle. "Even I have to admit, I didn't expect _that_ from Shinra..."

Lockhart swallowed uneasily. "But you'll take care of it?"

"...yes."

It would be for the best to put them out of their misery, wouldn't it? Even if they were like him...

"What about the mansion?" Zangan wondered. "And... him?"

Sephiroth glanced at Vincent, but before he could invent a convincing lie, Vincent spoke for himself.

"I was formerly with Shinra myself," he said. "I knew the researchers who did this, and I would like to see it put to an end. It was fortuitous that I encountered Sephiroth here."

Sephiroth nodded slowly. "Yes. Vincent has been able to shed some light on things. Now, if you'll excuse me. It... has been a trying few days."

Zangan didn't look quite convinced by the half-truths they'd offered him, but Lockhart nodded and stepped aside to let them pass. Sephiroth led the way to the inn, and upstairs to the room.

A light was on. Zack lay awake atop his bed, and he sat up as they entered. "You're back," he said.

"Cloud?" Sephiroth wondered, glancing around.

"He's been staying at his mom's the past few days," Zack explained. "Makes her feel safer."

Sephiroth nodded. "I suppose you can take his bed then," he remarked to Vincent, who made no move towards it. Sephiroth unbuckled his pauldrons, tossed them carelessly on the floor, and shrugged out of his coat. "I'm taking a shower," he announced.

"Good idea," Zack commented, and Sephiroth shot him a look before he left the room.

...it _had_ been a few days. He'd definitely smelled better.

It felt strange, standing under the water. Going through the motions of a routine that had belonged to his life before. Not that he was about to give up bathing, but... it felt incongruously mundane, right now. Everything he knew had been turned on its head, and he was taking a shower.

What else was there but these small things, until he knew the way forward? Go through the motions, and think.

Tomorrow he would go to the reactor, deal with Hojo's little side project, and see if there was anything that Jenova could offer him. If not, what then?

How did other people know so easily what they wanted? He thought of Zack, leaving his tiny village to go to Midgar and join SOLDIER, wanting to be a hero. Zack, who decided almost instantly whether he liked someone, who sought and thrived on connection. He leapt into everything, never second-guessing himself, or at least that was how it seemed to Sephiroth.

He could let his anger guide him. Return to Midgar, visit death on Hojo and everyone else who must have been complicit. How far would he get? Would anyone be able to stop him? Sephiroth wasn't sure of his own strength, if he had ever really unleashed his full power, but if Heidegger brought the full force of the military down on him... he was still only one man. Would it be a suicide run? Would he be satisfied with that, if he took enough of them down with him?

...no.

Sephiroth wanted more than that. A future he couldn't picture.

He put on a clean pair of pants and returned to the room to begin the lengthy process of detangling his hair. Vincent passed him, headed out.

"I convinced him he could use one, too," Zack explained. "He doesn't smell that bad for twenty-five years in a basement, but sounds grody to me."

"Hm," said Sephiroth.

"You feeling better?" Zack wondered. "Maybe a little more normal?"

Sephiroth let out a soft laugh. "Normal..."

"Well, you know. Normal for you."

"I don't think there's any going back to that," said Sephiroth. He paused, and looked at Zack anew. "What does all of this mean for you anyway? Do _you_ intend to return to Shinra?"

Zack ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know, man. I guess... I can't. I mean, I don't want to work for people who pull this kind of shit. But I've got a lot of friends in the company, you know? I can't just ghost 'em."

"You would go back for them?"

"That's kinda how friendship works, isn't it?"

Sephiroth shrugged. "I wouldn't know."

Zack gave him a rueful grin. "We'll, uh, work on that."

"...tomorrow, I'm going back to the reactor," said Sephiroth, "to see Jenova. I would like you to come, but it isn't an order."

"Of course I'll come," said Zack.

The immediacy of the reply wasn't surprising, and a few days ago, Sephiroth would have dismissed it for the loyalty of a subordinate, or for Zack's penchant for adventure. Maybe those were factors, but foremost he thought Zack had agreed because of their supposed friendship.

It had always been a bit one-sided, hadn't it?

"This is the part where you say 'thank you,'" Zack suggested into the pause.

"...thank you, Zack," he said. "And remind me sometime in the future... I owe you a favor."

Zack's eyebrows rose. "Can I get that in writing?"

"You don't trust my word?"

"Well- I didn't say _that_ , but... This's pretty wild for you."

"Lately... I don't know what I'm like," Sephiroth said, looking down at his own hands around the brush. "I may be becoming someone else."

"Is that good or bad?"

Sephiroth could only shake his head. "Who knows?"

Would he thrive, out from under Shinra's thumb? Or would he fail? Perhaps it was too late for him to follow a different path. With the way they had shaped him, he might never see it. Maybe he was abandoning the only thing he was good for to become a directionless nobody. He'd spend the rest of his days thinking in circles until he drove himself mad.

But... maybe better to be a madman than Shinra's fool.


	4. Chapter 4

Sephiroth woke in the night.

Someone had called his name. Sitting up, he looked across the other two beds. Zack lay sprawled on his back, fast asleep, but the far bed was empty. Vincent had gone.

He swung his bare feet to the floor and left the room.

Vincent was in the hall, gazing out one of the windows into the night. He glanced back as Sephiroth approached, and in the glance, Sephiroth knew it hadn't been his voice.

Just a dream, he decided. The certainty that he had heard anything at all was waning.

"Trouble sleeping?" he asked Vincent.

Vincent shook his head. "I slept for so long... I have no need or want for it now."

Sephiroth followed his gaze out the window, to the pine forest that backed the inn. The uncanny familiarity of this place... Had he spent time here, as a child, before Gast and Hojo had brought him to Midgar? Was _this_ a memory? Had he ever met his mother, before her death?

She must have died, he thought; Gast would not have allowed their separation. He had never spoken of her either, but... Sephiroth could understand in hindsight that Gast hadn't had great skill with people, much less children. He wouldn't have known how best to shield a child from the heartbreak of a mother's death, so he'd chosen silence. Or, at the very least, delay.

"...do you believe Gast would have told me any of this, had he lived?" he found himself asking.

Vincent looked back at him. "I don't know," he admitted. "But... he wasn't a man who enjoyed secrets. He would even share his findings with me, when Lucrecia and Hojo were otherwise occupied."

"But... I _was_ his finding," said Sephiroth.

"Is that how he treated you?"

Sephiroth hesitated. "Not always," he said. "He... talked to me. Read to me. Showed me places outside of the lab."

"You don't still...?"

Sephiroth interrupted the question with a scoff. "Live in the lab? Of course not. I have an apartment in Sector 4."

Vincent's brow furrowed, his expression showing no comprehension.

"In Midgar?" Sephiroth clarified.

"Ah," said Vincent. "I didn't realize they intended to continue using the numbers, once they completed construction."

"...you really have been out of it a long time."

"I suppose they finished the new headquarters. Is it impressive?"

Sephiroth shrugged. "It's tall."

Vincent's fingers slowly closed into fists, claws clicking against his metal palm. "...is it where Hojo does his work now?"

"If you want to call it that."

Vincent drew in a breath, and his eyes seemed to blaze a little brighter, but then he closed them and exhaled softly. "Later," he decided. "My first duty is to you."

Sephiroth shook his head. "You aren't the only one who wants him dead." Now there was a father-son activity, he thought wryly.

"We'll have to discuss it," said Vincent. "But it can wait. You should go back to sleep."

"I slept most of the day."

"After going four days without, as I understand it. There are a few more hours yet to daybreak. Use them. The reactor isn't going anywhere."

Sephiroth couldn't help laughing softly. "Are you telling me this as a father?"

Vincent's expression softened. "Perhaps. I never got to send you to bed when you were young."

'Got to,' like it would have been a privilege, a joy. He thought of how Hojo had been, impatient with his child's body's need for sleep, irritably pushing him off on aides who would escort him back to his room without saying a word to him, without even looking at him. Putting him to bed had been nothing more than a necessary task.

Sephiroth ran a hand through his hair. "Well, I'll listen," he said, "but I don't need a story."

"Probably for the best. You're a little old now for the ones I prepared."

Sephiroth faltered. "You... prepared stories?"

Vincent's face fell, and he looked away, back out the window. "I didn't know any, and I wanted to be ready, just in case... In case after you were born, she changed her mind, and wanted to run away together... the three of us."

Again, Sephiroth didn't know how to respond. Who _was_ this man? How could he speak so sincerely of this peaceful life he'd envisioned, with Sephiroth as his son, as though anything so stupid and normal could have been possible for him?

_You were wanted, Sephiroth._

Sleep had cleared the pounding in his head, and it actually sounded true here in the quiet. That someone could have wanted him, with no expectations or ulterior motives... But he couldn't be such a desperate fool as to be convinced by words alone. He wrapped his suspicion back around himself like armor.

"Good night, Vincent," he said stiffly, and turned from the other man to return to the bedroom.

Zack slumbered on, a strange constant in all of this. His _friend_ , before it had begun and now, still, even after learning...

Even after learning Sephiroth wasn't human, Zack's attitude towards him was unchanged. As though Sephiroth had simply heard some bad news. As though he, himself, weren't fundamentally altered. Vincent seemed the same way. Vincent had decided, a long time ago, to claim him. That they belonged to each other.

Sephiroth threw himself back onto his bed and stared up at the ceiling. When he'd gone down into that basement, what had he really expected to find? Answers as to his true parentage? Reassurance that he _wasn't_ a monster? He'd found those, perhaps, if what Vincent said was true.

And maybe he resisted it the harder because if it _was_ true, then it still wasn't enough. There wasn't as much meaning in where he'd come from as he wanted there to be. It didn't solve him, and it didn't erase what he'd lived through. It was a salve on an open wound.

Morning came, and Zack insisted the three of them eat breakfast before leaving. Sephiroth agreed to it only because the time it took to prepare gave him a moment to use the inn's telephone. The old innkeeper grumbled about giving him his privacy, but disappeared into the back room without much argument. Sephiroth dialed a number at Headquarters, and waited.

"Tseng speaking," came the prompt answer.

"Tseng. This is Sephiroth. I need you to look into some things for me."

"Sir? Why not ask--"

"I'm asking you," Sephiroth interrupted. They had worked together before, and Sephiroth thought he understood the man's loyalties. Besides, there was a chance that any knowledge of Sephiroth's true origins was above his pay grade.

"Very well," said Tseng. "What do you need?"

"I want you to find out anything you can about a man named Vincent who may have been a member of the Turks some twenty-six or -seven years ago. And... if he ever worked with a scientist named Lucrecia."

"I can check our records. May I ask what this is about?"

"No," said Sephiroth. "And you aren't to mention it to anyone. I require your discretion."

"Understood."

"Don't call this number. I'll contact you again later."

He hung up the phone just as Zack was coming down the stairs to check on the food. He arched an eyebrow, but Sephiroth didn't answer the unspoken question.

The three of them sat around the table in the room, Zack talking animatedly about some ridiculous dream he'd had last night while Vincent ate mechanically, going through the motions. Their demeanors could not have been more different, and yet they both professed to be here for the same reason: to support him.

Sephiroth took up the Masamune as they left, a familiar weight in his hand. In a way, he felt more comfortable with it than he did with his own body right now. He knew the blade and how it would move; it was unchanged.

Zack swung his sword onto his back, and Vincent holstered his gun, and the three of them went downstairs.

"I don't recall checking _you_ in..." the innkeeper observed.

Sephiroth glanced at Vincent and then asked, "Is it a problem?"

The innkeeper shook his head. "No, not really. Just like to meet people before they stay the night..." His voice had slowed and he was squinting now. "Say, have you ever stayed here before? You look familiar."

"I have been to this town before," said Vincent, "though I've never stayed at the inn."

"Hmm... Always thought I was pretty good with faces, but I can't place you. Must be getting old."

"Don't sweat it, Gramps," said Zack. "Happens even to the best of us sometimes, right?"

The old man smiled and shrugged. "Maybe. Take care of yourselves out there."

Cloud waited for them outside the inn, helmet on as it always was when he was out and about in the town. Sephiroth didn't pretend to understand why he didn't want anyone to recognize him, nor why Zack had insisted they go along with it, despite sounding exasperated as he made his case. Returning to one's hometown could be complicated, he supposed.

If he could undo the past few days, hiding instead from what Nibelheim had to show him, would he? It had been a simpler life.

But it had been a lie.

"You're to stay here and keep an eye on the village," he told Cloud.

A quick frown crossed his face--clearly he'd expected to come along--but he knew better than to protest. "Yes, sir," was all he said.

Zack gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. "If you find yourself getting jealous, I want you to remember what a pain it was taking the long way back from the reactor. Just relax. And maybe return that casserole dish?"

Cloud scratched the back of his neck. "Maybe."

"Let's get moving," said Sephiroth, not wanting any further banter to delay them.

Zack nodded, and he and Vincent fell in behind as Sephiroth made for the village's northern exit. Different men were on watch this morning, and they acknowledged his passage with only a nod. He caught a wariness in their eyes. They had trusted him when he'd arrived; now, they were unsure.

The mountains ahead looked no different from before, their shapes jutting strangely against the sky. They were like none anywhere in the world; was it the high concentration of Mako that had resulted in this stone bramble? It seemed unnatural, not something the Planet should have formed on its own.

Should the Cetra in him have known, whether this was the Planet's design or not?

He had never felt any strong connection to the earth. He'd spent most of his life in Midgar, high above the ground, surrounded by Shinra's technological hubris. He wondered if it had damaged him somehow, cut him off from something he was meant to know? The rock beneath his boots felt like rock, and that was all.

Climbing up the path beside him, Vincent was staring.

"What is it?" Sephiroth asked.

"This all looks... different now."

"Different how?"

"There used to be trees," said Vincent. "Not this bare rock. The view was obscured until you climbed higher."

"Must've made it harder to look out for monsters," Zack remarked from behind them, but Vincent shook his head.

"There were no monsters. Only wild animals."

"It's the reactor," Sephiroth explained. "You see this kind of change within a few years, wherever they're built."

"...I suppose they're too lucrative for Shinra to care," Vincent surmised.

"Exactly," said Sephiroth, and he frowned at the thought. _He_ should have cared, but he'd never even bothered to reflect on it. Humans were damaging the Planet, poisoning it for the sake of their own convenience.

Shinra had used him to uphold that way of life, when as a Cetra it was surely something he should have condemned. They'd blinded him to that, and he'd allowed them to. He'd fought an entire war to enable... this. If Jenova _were_ alive, what would she make of that?

"I've been wondering," Vincent went on, "about your mission. About who it was that ordered you to Nibelheim."

"The orders came through Heidegger, like always," Sephiroth said, and then he grasped what Vincent was getting at. "You think he set me up."

"I reported to Heidegger. He knew about the Project. He must have known there was a chance you would discover Gast's work."

Sephiroth frowned. "But why would he want me to? He risks turning me against him, along with all of Shinra."

"Now that the war is over, are you as useful to him?" Vincent asked. "Or, he may only be complicit in someone else's scheme."

Maybe his usefulness to Shinra _was_ waning. A war hero in peacetime. If he had had any ambitions within the company, his popularity made him a threat. But, to risk making an enemy of him... Had the conspirators expected a different outcome?

"Do you have to feed his paranoia?" said Zack, sounding exasperated.

Sephiroth glanced back at him. "It's not paranoia if there really is a plot. But I can't root it out without returning to Headquarters. There's no point speculating now."

"Yeah, go with that," said Zack. "You already suspect everybody anyhow."

"I doubt the entire company is against you," Vincent offered. "Too many would balk at the idea of human experimentation of that magnitude."

"I wonder," said Sephiroth. Those in SOLDIER received their Mako 'treatments' as a matter of course, and anyone who interacted with Hojo had to recognize what kind of man he was. What he was doing at the reactor would have come as no surprise to Sephiroth, if not for Jenova's involvement.

"Have things changed that much?" said Vincent. "The monsters at the reactor... They weren't human, were they?"

"They used to be."

"But you still intend to kill them?"

Sephiroth glanced at him. "You'll understand when you see them," he said. "They aren't like you or me."

"Perhaps," Vincent acknowledged, "but all the same, I don't yet understand this body. I hope... it doesn't prove a danger to you."

Sephiroth couldn't help a short laugh. "If nothing else in your story proves true, I'll believe you've been living under a rock. The last thing anyone worries about is bringing harm to 'the Great Sephiroth.'"

"Are you invincible?"

"No--"

"Then I'll worry."

Sephiroth fixed him with a wry look, but Vincent was, again, sincere. He didn't look at Sephiroth and see a super soldier, but just a man. A normal man with needs and wants. In some ways it was annoying, but in others it was fascinating. He had always wondered what it was like to be seen as normal.

For his part, Vincent didn't demonstrate any inhuman capabilities when they encountered the mountain's native monsters. He kept his distance and used his firearm, and while he was an able marksman, that was all.

They followed the winding mountain trails through the mists of low-hanging clouds, until at last the reactor revealed itself ahead of them. An exceedingly crude design compared to Midgar's reactors, there was nevertheless something... powerful about it. Sephiroth felt drawn to it.

Inside, the Mako stench intensified, and the air grew close and warm, stifling after the open chill of the mountains. The hum of machinery surrounded them, reverberating in the stone walls. The exposed gears and pipes had the look of something jury-rigged, as though the engineers who had built it had had no blueprint to work from, and instead cobbled together parts until they found a configuration that worked.

Likewise little thought had been given to ease of access for maintenance work. Sephiroth climbed down to reach the narrow walkway suspended over the Mako pit. Steam wafted up from beneath him, and his boots echoed.

Almost there.

As he passed into the next chamber, his eyes were already lifted to the door he knew would be there. The door marked Jenova. The rows of pods and the tangle of piping through the room didn't matter.

His feet carried him up the staircase. His gloved hand pressed against the locked door. _I'm here_.

Vincent was beside him, and that annoyed him when he realized it. He was intruding--but Vincent input a code into the keypad beside the door, trying to open it for him. The light remained red.

"It's as I thought," said Vincent, shaking his head. "It's been too long."

"I could break it open," Sephiroth considered, leaning his weight into the metal door, feeling its strength. "Would it risk hurting her?"

Vincent and Zack exchanged glances, thinking he didn't notice them. They thought he was behaving strangely.

But through that door was the final piece of what he was, who he was. Standing here, he felt even more certain that Vincent was wrong; Jenova was more than just a collection of cells. There was a presence there, waiting for him. She had been waiting for this a long time, just as he had.

Vincent was pulling the cover off of the keypad. "Let me see if I can do this another way," he said.

"You okay, Seph?" Zack asked him.

"I will be," he said, "soon."

"...you're weirding me out a little."

"Why?"

"All of a sudden it's like you're... mesmerized."

Sephiroth shook his head and glanced up at the name above the door. "I can... _feel_ her. I think she's calling to me."

"Is that something Ancients can do?"

"I don't know. Maybe it is."

If he could only speak with her, then she could tell him. She could explain to him this part of his heritage, and maybe it would make more sense to him than the human existence he'd been struggling to comprehend ever since he'd been allowed to participate. Maybe Cetra ways would come more naturally, more easily than trying to fit himself into the wrong mould.

The light went green. The door slid open.

Sephiroth stepped into the chamber beyond. It was dimly lit, and that light glinted off some sort of decorative, mechanical torso in front of a large glass tank, tubes splaying out from its shoulders in the semblance of wings. One large tube snaked its way up from the floor and into the base of the tank, and Sephiroth climbed it to the mechanical angel.

_It was in the way._

He gripped it and yanked, and he could feel tubes and wires snapping, giving--

"Seph?" Zack's anxious voice from behind him.

He tore it free, exposing the tank behind. More lights switched on in alarm, and with a flicker revealed the figure within. Not just some collection of cells, but a woman, living, breathing. She _looked_ at him.

"Holy shit," said Zack.

"I'm going to get you out," Sephiroth told her, and he took a step back, raising the Masamune.

"Sephiroth--" Vincent began.

Sephiroth ignored him. The Masamune scored through the tank, starting a web of cracks through the glass. Another strike shattered it, and the Mako within burst out. It surged over and past him, shards of glass scraping against his pauldrons, his coat, showering down onto the floor of the chamber behind him.

The figure inside the tank had curled in on herself, but she remained tethered upright by some apparatus on her head, and supported by the tube protruding from her abdomen. Sephiroth stepped inside, quickly severed the last of the cables, and caught her as she fell.

"Are you... Jenova?" he said.

She shook her head weakly, not a no, but an indication she needed more time to speak. He waited, holding her awkwardly. Out of the blue-green cast of the Mako, her skin was colorless and grey, pitted with scars, and her hair fell silver across her chest and down her back. Silver, like his own.

The crunch of glass alerted him to the others approaching. Jenova's hand gripped his arm, and he felt a flash of anger.

"Stay back, humans," he barked.

They froze, and Zack held up his hands. "Just wanted to check if you were okay. Uh, both of you. Maybe we should've brought a coat or something..."

A coat! Sephiroth thought stupidly. He set the Masamune down and reached for the fastenings of his pauldrons, but he stopped just as abruptly.

_There's no need_ , he was sure she said, though he didn't hear her voice aloud. _My magic will do_.

"Are you sure you're strong enough...?"

_Yes. Now that I am free, I will be all right._

Cautiously, Sephiroth took hold of the Masamune again, and helped Jenova to her feet. As she stood, her appearance changed entirely, from her somewhat alien beauty to the image of a human woman with a fair complexion, green eyes, and soft brown hair cascading down her back. She wore, or appeared to wear, a long red dress.

"I think this will serve me well enough as a disguise among humans," she said as they all stared.

She looked familiar, Sephiroth realized. Had she come into his dreams in this form...?

Jenova looked up at him and then shook her head slightly. "It's been too long... I don't remember now, how I once looked, what my name was. This woman, I found her in your memories."

"In my memories?" he repeated.

"Yes. We are connected, you and I. I can see into your heart."

"Should you not ask permission before searching someone else's memories?" asked Vincent.

Jenova turned her attention on him, her lips tightening into a frown and her eyes narrowing. "A hypocritical question, coming from you," she said. "I don't recall your team asking my permission before confining me here."

"...I did not think you were alive," said Vincent.

"And now?"

"Obviously I was wrong. But you can think of me what you will; I only care how you treat Sephiroth."

"I don't mind," Sephiroth told her. "I want you to know me. Then, maybe... you can tell me all about you."

Jenova nodded. "But first, I want to leave this place."

"Right. Of course."

Sephiroth helped her out and down from the tank. The broken glass crunched beneath her shoes, and he wondered, had she changed her form, or only how it appeared? He cringed at the thought that in reality, she walked across that floor with bare feet.

_I am not so fragile as that_ , she said to him.

Zack was still staring at her.

"How long are you going to keep that up?" Sephiroth asked him sharply.

Zack gave a start and ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry. It's just... You look an awful lot like someone I know," he explained.

"Perhaps it's a good face I've chosen then," said Jenova. "Commonplace."

"Uh... maybe," said Zack uncertainly.

Sephiroth escorted Jenova out of the chamber and into the room with all the pods. She paused there, looking down at them.

"I think... they were meant to be like me," Sephiroth explained, "but Hojo is an incompetent scientist. We should put them out of their misery."

"No," said Jenova. "They may be far inferior to you, but they are still my children. Let them out."

"Uh, no offense," Zack broke in from behind them, "but that sounds like a _really_ bad idea. The whole reason we came here is because some of them got loose and attacked the village."

"Now that I am free, I can calm their minds," Jenova assured him. "There's no danger."

"All right," said Sephiroth. He let go her arm and approached the nearest of the pods.

"Hang on a second!" said Zack, hurrying after him. "You're not really going to just do it, are you?"

"Why not?"

"Because..." Zack gestured, unable to find his words.

"I think it would be wiser to wait," said Vincent. "Jenova has only been free a matter of minutes. She may not be accurately assessing her strength, after her ordeal."

Sephiroth hesitated, looking back at Jenova. Everything he sensed from her told him it was all right. She knew her strength, and she knew her children; they'd been connected for years.

But...

If he let them loose, then how much of her attention would they take? Would she feel an obligation to stay with them, to care for them? They were pitiable creatures, and they would suffer without her.

_Don't worry, my son. I will not abandon you._

"Perhaps you _should_ rest for a time," Sephiroth decided, even so. "Before you take on such a responsibility... you should savor your freedom."

Jenova was quiet for a long moment, but then she smiled. "Maybe you're right. It has been _two thousand years_ since I last tasted the open air. Since I saw the world beyond the glass. Why don't you show me what it's like now?"

"I would be glad to," said Sephiroth.

"And... I know it was a human woman who gave birth to you, but I would like it very much if you would call me 'Mother.' It has more meaning to me than the name 'Jenova.'"

Sephiroth smiled. "Of course... Mother."


	5. Chapter 5

"I don't like this," Zack said to Vincent as they followed Sephiroth and Jenova at a distance down the mountain slope.

"Neither do I," said Vincent, never taking his eyes off of the pair ahead. The change in Sephiroth's demeanor unsettled him. In place of the conflicted young man he'd met yesterday morning was a devoted and contented son, eager to comply with the wishes of his newfound 'mother.' Where had all his questions gone? His suspicion? Did he not consider even for a moment that Jenova's manner towards him was an act?

"I've _never_ seen him trust anyone this fast," Zack went on, echoing his thoughts. "He was going to let all those things loose, just because she asked him to. It's like she's got him under some kind of spell."

Vincent nodded. "I didn't want to deny him his exploration into his origins, but this... this isn't an exploration. It's blind acceptance."

Zack's brow furrowed in worry, watching the pair ahead of them, who seemed content to ignore them. Sephiroth may as well have forgotten they existed.

"Could we be overreacting?" Zack wondered. "I mean, she's an Ancient, right? Weren't they supposed to be good people? Caretakers of the Planet and all that? Maybe Sephiroth can just sense something about her that we can't, 'cause he's one, too, sort of."

"Even if she was the kindest of people then," said Vincent, "it's been two _thousand_ years. Who knows how that time might have changed her?"

"If she's angry, she's got reasons to be," Zack pointed out. "Shinra's been keeping her locked up, using her... Maybe she just needs some time to process that."

"Perhaps," Vincent conceded. "But... That isn't the feeling I get."

The anger she bore them wouldn't be calmed by time or reason, he felt, and she didn't want those monsters freed so she could care for them. She was only biding her time, because Sephiroth wasn't wholly hers yet, and she couldn't afford to make an enemy of him.

Zack hesitated, but he nodded. "We sure as hell can't tell _Sephiroth_ that, though. At least, not until we can figure out a way to get him away from her for a minute. He wasn't acting so weird until we got close."

"I don't know if distance will undo this... but it's too soon for the more extreme option."

Zack caught his eye. "You don't mean..."

"As I said, it's too soon."

Zack held his gaze a moment longer and then looked away. "Yeah..." he said, but he didn't refute the possibility. If Jenova proved dangerous--to Sephiroth, to the town--they might have to kill her. Though even having said it was too soon, Vincent wondered: what _were_ the powers of the Ancients? What strength might she recover in time? She had survived all this time. Would they be _able_ to kill her, the two of them?

But at least Zack understood the danger, and Vincent was grateful to have an ally. His relationship with Sephiroth was a fledgling one; any effort on his part to separate Sephiroth from Jenova would be met with hostility.

If only he had had Lucrecia at his side. She might have known what to do, what to say. Surely her connection to Sephiroth would have been stronger already. A real mother in contrast to this false one, this facade...

"Who does she look like to you?" he wondered suddenly. "She must have chosen that form for a reason, but I don't think she expected it to look familiar to you."

Zack ran a hand through his hair. "She looks like my girlfriend, actually. Older, but... they could be sisters, easy."

"Has Sephiroth ever met her?"

"No, I've never introduced them. He's never been that interested in my personal life."

Vincent frowned. "Does she have any family with ties to Shinra, perhaps?"

Zack shook his head. "It's just her and her mom. Her dad was in the army, I think. Died in the war."

"Perhaps it really is just a coincidence..." Vincent said, though he still felt there was some connection they couldn't see.

"I don't know," said Zack. "But it weirds me out, I'll tell you that."

"It's an odd power for her to have, isn't it?"

"You think?"

"Why should the Ancients have needed illusions to disguise themselves? Who were they hiding from?"

"Well..." Zack rubbed at his chin. "From what Sephiroth was telling me, there were humans who lived at the same time as them. Maybe they didn't get along so well."

"Hmm."

"Let's not keep up the pattern, all right? I know what my gut's telling me, but she hasn't _done_ anything, so as long as she doesn't give us a reason to be her enemies, we've gotta be nice to her. For Sephiroth's sake."

Vincent said nothing. To be kind to a woman who had usurped the role of Sephiroth's mother, that rightly belonged to the woman he loved... To be kind to a woman who was preying on Sephiroth's desire for family to further her own agenda...

"Or... polite, at least," Zack amended. "I don't know if 'nice' is in your playbook."

"I am... trying. With Sephiroth."

Zack regarded him for a long moment and then remarked, "Must be weird. Having a grown-up kid all of a sudden."

It was so much more than weird, Vincent thought. "I thought," he confided, "if I were to be a father, that I would have time to learn... That _she_ would help me... But he's been through so much, and I wasn't there for him."

"Well..." Zack ventured, looking ahead. "Seems like he's still got a _lot_ ahead of him."

"...I hope I can help him through it."

"Yeah. Me, too."

The route between the village and the reactor was considerably longer with the bridge down, and despite the uncanny way monsters seemed to avoid Jenova's presence, evening was falling by the time they returned. By now, Jenova had altered her appearance again, giving herself clothes more suited for travel, to fit the story they had invented to explain her arrival: a young woman lost in the mountain pass, whom they had rescued from monsters.

"And, were you able to take care of them?" Lockhart pressed. "The monsters?"

"Yes," Sephiroth lied. "You don't have to worry about them any longer."

Vincent saw Zack throw him a look out of the corner of his eye, but he didn't return it. This wasn't the time to contradict Sephiroth.

Lockhart let out a heavy breath of relief and smiled. "Well, I'm glad to hear _that_ ," he said.

"But if Shinra did this on purpose..." Zangan began, his brow furrowing. "Is the village truly safe?"

"I can't predict what Shinra might do in the future," Sephiroth admitted, "but they've lost the means to create any more of those monsters. As long as you keep quiet about it, I see no reason for them to take action against your village."

"Keep quiet, huh?" Zangan muttered, shaking his head, but he glanced at Lockhart and said, "Well, I suppose I can do that."

"Why _would_ Shinra do a thing like that, though?" Lockhart wondered. "What's the point of making monsters?"

Something flickered across Sephiroth's face, an unease with the question that belied some remaining conflict within him. "They were after another kind of soldier," he said, "but soldiers they can't control are no good to them."

The two men regarded him uncertainly for a moment before Lockhart offered, "You know, I think it's a good thing, that you won't be working for Shinra anymore, if that's the sort of thing they're up to. I don't know what you mean to do after this, but we'll always be grateful for your help."

"Indeed," said Zangan. "You're a good man for choosing not to be party to that."

Sephiroth faltered, and Zack clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Hear that, Seph? Sounds like your fan club should survive the transition."

Lockhart chuckled. "I don't know about any of that, but I would like to extend an invitation to you and your men for dinner."

Sephiroth glanced at Jenova and then shook his head. "No. Thank you for the offer, but I'm tired, and I'm afraid I'd make poor company."

"Does that go for all of you?" Lockhart wondered.

Zack scratched his head. "It's been a long day," he agreed. "Maybe another time?"

"I wouldn't want to impose," said Vincent when Lockhart's gaze turned to him.

"Ah, well," said Lockhart. "You all be sure and get your rest then. Oh! And Jenova, was it? I'm afraid our inn is full up with these Shinra-- _ex_ -Shinra people, but I'm sure we can sort something out for you for the night."

"There's no need," she said smoothly. "We've already spoken about it, and we'll work things out at the inn."

"Oh." Lockhart looked briefly perplexed at the notion that she would choose to room with three strange men over finding accommodations with some village family, but he shrugged it off. "Well, however it suits you."

Cloud joined them as they returned to the inn, and once they were in the privacy of the room, Zack related to him what had actually happened at the reactor. Sephiroth ignored them, his attention returning to focus entirely on Jenova. He was determined to make her as comfortable as possible, the sleeping arrangements just how she wanted them, asking what she might like from the kitchen and where she'd be most at ease eating.

Vincent watched them from the doorway, wondering. How much of this was Jenova exerting some unnatural influence on him, and how much of it was Sephiroth himself? Sephiroth had greeted Vincent with suspicion, but it wasn't a father he'd longed for, not when he'd thought he'd been cursed with Hojo. Jenova was the mother he'd been told of, a mother returned to him from the dead. A mother who might make sense of the inhumanity he'd discovered in himself, in a way no one else could.

He'd seemed more himself speaking to the village men. So was it a spell for him to be so eager for Jenova's every word? Or had he simply let his guard down in the face of the one thing he wanted most? If this affection was genuine, Vincent hated to discourage it, but he hated, too, the thought that it would be betrayed.

Cloud retired to his mother's house for the evening, and the rest of them ate dinner in the room. Vincent found himself seated across from Jenova, his view of her obscured by the table lamp. But, it wasn't her true face, anyway.

"So," said Zack, "things must be pretty different from two thousand years ago, huh?"

"In some ways, yes," said Jenova. "We didn't have the technological monstrosities you've built for yourselves--your electric lights, your reactors, your automobiles--that city of Midgar, teaming with so many people... But this village isn't so unfamiliar. The people wear different clothes and speak different words, but it's the same at its core."

"You've been to Midgar?" Zack wondered in surprise.

"No," she said, "but Sephiroth has."

"Oh. Right, the whole... memory thing. I guess that helps a lot to catch you up on things."

"Yes. To me, it is a wealth of knowledge."

Vincent kept his tone carefully neutral. Polite, if not kind. "May I ask about the face you chose?" he said. "If it's all right with Sephiroth?"

"I can answer that myself," said Sephiroth. "She's helped me to recall-- it was a woman I saw as a child. A mother. She had come to the lab with her baby."

"Did she work there?" Vincent wondered. It seemed odd to him for Shinra to allow an employee to bring a child to the lab, but the alternative...

Sephiroth shook his head. "I don't know. I only remember how protective she was. As though she'd murder anyone who tried to take that child from her."

Jenova met Vincent's gaze through the glare of the lamp. A tacit threat. Aloud, she said, "This was the first mother he knew, even if she wasn't his own. It felt appropriate, to me."

"But your real body--" Zack began, and faltered. "I mean, are you healing under there? All that stuff you were hooked up to..."

"I am healing," Jenova confirmed. "It may take some time, but one day I hope I'll be able to be something closer to my true self."

Healing, and growing stronger, Vincent thought.

"Your magic is impressive already," he said. "I don't recall Gast or Lucrecia theorizing the Ancients had anything like it."

"I'm sure much about the Cetra has been forgotten," said Jenova. "The magic you know now is nothing but simple elemental tricks. Millennia ago, it was part of a way of life. We lived and breathed it."

"I look forward to learning that again," Sephiroth said.

Jenova smiled at him, and the smile never touched her eyes, but Sephiroth didn't seem to notice.

Vincent still felt no need for sleep, a fact which Sephiroth had anticipated. The other three turned in, with no shortage of beds, and Vincent took up his vigil in the hall outside. Through the open doorway, he could just see the end of Jenova's bed.

He didn't know what to do. How could he unmask Jenova, before it was too late? If she had access to Sephiroth's memories, then she already knew him more intimately than anyone ever had. She knew what he wanted to hear and to know, she knew his confusion these past few days, she even knew what Vincent had said to him, so she might pick it apart and feed Sephiroth's distrust. How long before she isolated him again? Could she sway him back to the rage he'd felt?

For all that Sephiroth had survived, he was vulnerable now. His world was in chaos, and he'd latched on to someone who would destroy him.

Perhaps an hour passed, and Jenova stirred. She left her bed and walked to the door, looking directly at him. She stepped out, and shut it behind her.

"Do you intend to stare at me all night?" she asked.

"I intend to keep watch over my son," said Vincent.

"If he _is_ your son. You're only guessing."

"You aren't his mother. You didn't give birth to him."

"But my genes are in him just the same. Our connection proves that. Do _you_ have any such proof?"

Vincent frowned. "What do you want from me?" he asked.

"I want you to leave. Give up your silly claim. He doesn't need you."

If she saw him as a threat, then maybe he'd made more progress with Sephiroth than he'd thought. Maybe his words could have an impact after all. "I won't leave him to you," he said.

"Why do you think I wish him ill? He is my only kin."

"You want to use him."

"I want to ask for his help," Jenova corrected. "Is that so wrong?"

"And what is it you want his help with? Revenge?"

Jenova regarded him levelly. "Did you yourself not consider taking revenge together with him, on Hojo?"

Vincent shook his head. "That's different. He wants it for himself."

"He'll want this, too," she said.

"Even against me?" Vincent wondered.

"A fair question," Jenova said. "Let's find out."

Her hand slammed into his throat, faster than he could react. His back hit the window behind him, and his head struck the pane. She was far, far stronger than any human woman could have been. He gripped her arm with both hands, but could not wrench it free. As he struggled for air, even as his strength began to wane, something else inside him was screaming.

He had to end this, not before death, but before _that_.

He reached for his gun and managed to free it from its holster. Jenova did not relent as he lifted it to her shoulder, and pulled the trigger.

Everything happened at once. She released her grip on him and staggered back. The bedroom door slammed open, Sephiroth in the doorway. Vincent fell to the floor beneath the window, gulping ragged breaths, his blood still screaming.

"What have you done!?" Sephiroth cried, rushing to Jenova's side. Blood oozed from her shoulder, and she reached for him weakly with her other arm.

A trap. How easily she'd done it.

Zack was in the doorway now, and Jenova was speaking in a trembling voice, spinning a lie about how Vincent had attacked her. He could scarcely hear her over the blood pounding in his ears. He could breathe again, but his body was seizing, still gripped with the panic of death. His skin was too tight, and the heat in his veins made him break out in a sweat.

Sephiroth was in front of him. He tore the gun from his grasp, lifted him to his feet, and threw him against the wall beside the window. "How _dare_ you attack her!" he shouted. "What is this? Jealousy?"

Zack was saying something, words that Sephiroth ignored and Vincent couldn't make out.

"Get away," Vincent managed. His tongue felt wrong in his mouth. "I must... get away."

Something else flashed through the fury on Sephiroth's face. "What's wrong with you?" he said.

Vincent shook his head. "Please," he said. "I'm..."

His body convulsed, trying to pull in on itself even as Sephiroth held him. His bones scraped against each other and his muscles knotted up inside of him. Something bored into his skull. His vision swam with black, and he lost track of his surroundings, unable to process anything outside of himself. Something had been _waiting_ for this chance, and it had already clawed its way too far out, he couldn't force it back down. He couldn't stop it.

The thing inside him tore loose, surging through every inch of his body, and he threw his head back and howled. He was _stronger_ now. The enemy that had tried to snuff him out would regret it. He whipped his head around, looking for her.

Somehow he was on the ground, outside, among the pines. Building behind him. No enemy in sight except for--

The man with the silver hair standing some paces ahead. This man had attacked him, but now his eyes were wide, shock leaving him vulnerable. The beast leapt forward, claws slashing for the man's bare chest.

He reacted faster than expected, and the beast's claws found nothing. A knee slammed into the side of his head. He shook it off and turned, intending to gore the man with his horns, but the man took hold of them and threw him back.

He howled again and summoned fire. The flames caught on the sparse grass and the lower branches of the pines, but his adversary charged in too close to be burned and tackled him to the ground. His claws and teeth gnashed for his enemy, forcing him off.

The beast found his feet again, and they faced off against each other. The beast bared his fangs in a grin.

He was strong. A worthy opponent.

He eagerly anticipated the moment when, after a hard fight, his jaws would sink into the man's flesh, tear him apart, and claim victory. But something made him hesitate.

Worthy...

The man's scent filled his nostrils. Something familiar... Something like the enemy that had tried to kill him, yes, but also something like his other self.

The man hesitated, too. "Are you still in there?" he said.

No, not an enemy, he remembered. This was his...!

The next thing he knew, Vincent found himself gasping for air again. There was ground beneath him, damp soil under his fingers. His whole body felt like fire.

"Vincent," said a sharp voice, Sephiroth's voice. A strange tone, torn between anger and worry.

Vincent managed to lift his head. "What..." Panic swept over him; the last minutes were a haze but his eyes landed on a set of scratches running down Sephiroth's bare arm. "I hurt you."

Sephiroth glanced at the wound and shook his head. "It's nothing," he said. "I'm fine."

"No, I..." Vincent groaned, and he ducked his head, curling in on himself until the fire inside him at last began to subside. In its wake, it left a bone-deep weariness. With effort, he pushed himself to his knees and then sat back. His boots were ruined, the soles loose and dragging. His clothes hadn't fared much better, torn or strained at the seams.

He looked up to take in his surroundings. A few flames licked at the grass and the trees around them, but a light rain had begun falling, and they weren't spreading. The back of the inn lay not far away, and a window was open on the second floor--had they fallen through it? Zack stood there now, silhouetted against the light.

"You guys okay down there?" he called.

"Yes," Sephiroth answered. "See to my mother."

Vincent doubted that Jenova needed any looking after, but Zack disappeared from the window without argument. Sephiroth looked back at Vincent.

"What was that just now?" he demanded. "You attacked my mother, and then..."

Vincent shook his head. "That isn't how it happened," he said. "Though, I doubt you'll believe me, over her."

Sephiroth folded his arms. "Tell me anyway. You pride yourself on being honest with me, don't you?"

Honesty... The past minutes had put their already fragile beginning in jeopardy, but even if Sephiroth wouldn't accept the truth, to omit it now could be even more damaging.

"Jenova... wants to drive me away from you," said Vincent. "She knows I don't trust her, and perhaps it's revenge, too, for my part in confining her. We spoke briefly in the hallway, and then she attacked me. I couldn't breathe, and I only shot her in hopes of freeing myself. As for the rest...... You saw what happened. I can't explain it more than that. I've never... been through it before."

Sephiroth regarded him coldly, but it was neither disbelief nor anger on his face. "You _were_ complicit in her captivity," he said. "She's been hiding it well, but her pain and anger over it runs deep. You shouldn't antagonize her."

Vincent blinked. "But... you believe me?"

Sephiroth glanced up at the inn's windows and then back at Vincent. "That transformation... Something drove you to lose control of yourself. We fought battles enough going up Mt. Nibel, but you never once felt your life was in danger, did you?"

"...no," Vincent confirmed. "I didn't."

"Whichever one of you struck first," Sephiroth went on, "I can believe that she overpowered you, and that she may have intended to kill you."

"And, if she had succeeded?" Vincent asked quietly.

Sephiroth regarded him silently for a long moment. Then he stepped forward and offered his hand. Vincent glanced down at his own. Human now, but not long ago it had been something else. _He_ had been something else. A monster.

He reached out, anticipating the jolt of contact--the strong grip of his son's hand, one that pulled him to his feet with ease, but Sephiroth didn't hold on a moment longer than necessary, and it was gone again.

His eyes fell again on the scratches he had left. "Your arm--" he began.

"I said it's fine," Sephiroth interrupted. "They're shallow, a simple Cure spell will take care of them."

Vincent didn't push it, though it pained him. It should never have happened. Shallow or no, he had wounded his son. Attacked his son. Likely tried to kill him, though he couldn't recall enough of the beast's intent. That Sephiroth was willing to speak with him at all was more than he deserved.

And how much longer would this chance last, to talk to his son alone?

"Sephiroth," he said, "you can't trust Jenova. She's lied to you."

Sephiroth shook his head. "Maybe she did, but I understand why. She has no one in the world but me. She doesn't want me to reject her because of this."

"...I understand you want her to be everything you need," Vincent said softly, "but please. Be careful with her, as you are with me. You don't know her yet."

"But I can _feel_ her," said Sephiroth.

"And what do you feel? Does she choose what she shares with you? Can you see _her_ memories?"

Sephiroth didn't answer.

"I'm... I won't ask you to reject her. There may well be a great many things she can teach you. And... I may be wrong about her. I hope I am. But I don't want you to be hurt."

Sephiroth scoffed. "I am still perfectly capable of thinking for myself. I don't need you trying to protect me."

"How can I not try, as your father?"

"We don't know that you are."

"Then let me prove it. You wanted to return to the reactor for Jenova. We've done that. Let us go on to Cosmo Canyon."

Sephiroth shook his head. "I am not ready to leave Nibelheim."

"We can return again, afterwards."

"No. But you can go by yourself. Take a sample of my blood and find out the truth before you play any more at being my father."

Vincent opened his mouth, but no words came to him to dispute it. The last thing Sephiroth wanted was anything else in his life built on a lie. He wasn't willing to go any further with this, with whatever relationship they might have, without knowing for certain.

"I understand," he said softly. "I'll leave in the morning."

Sephiroth, too, seemed on the verge of saying something, but instead he walked past Vincent, headed towards the front of the inn. "Come on," he said, motioning for Vincent to follow. "I'll lend you a pair of pants, and you can figure something else out in the morning."

"Thank you," said Vincent. "Not only for that, but... for not condemning me either, yet."

Sephiroth made no reply.

Their commotion had woken the innkeeper, but he was bleary-eyed enough that they managed to mollify him with some vague story about sleepwalking. Only a dim light was on in the room behind him, so it would have been easy for him to miss Sephiroth's wound and the state of Vincent's clothing.

They sent him back to bed, and Sephiroth pressed on swiftly upstairs, where his attention returned to Jenova. Between Zack's borrowed materia and her magic, she assured him that her wound was largely healed already, and he didn't need to worry. Her disguise was again flawless, and Vincent wondered how much he had actually hurt her, beneath it.

Zack pressed them with questions, but Sephiroth was sparse with his explanation, and under Jenova's glare, Vincent declined to elaborate. He took the pair of pants and left the room, distancing himself from her. Sephiroth shut the door behind him.

Not condemned, but not forgiven either.

Now, of course, after that transformation, his body craved sleep. The floor would have to do.

In the morning, he would leave. He would travel without rest, and return with proof, and hope to the gods that he wouldn't lose his son to an illusion in the time that he was gone.


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning he woke was like no other. Despite the chaos in the night, Sephiroth felt more at peace than he ever had in his life. So many unknowns about himself remained, but it was all right, because the answers were at his fingertips.

He turned his head, and there she was: his mother, lying asleep in the next bed, only a little distance away. She maintained the illusion even asleep, of that woman he'd seen in the lab... He remembered how he'd imagined, for a little while, that maybe his own mother had held him with that same fierce care, in her last moments. And, maybe she had once. He hadn't thought to ask Vincent for the details of his birth.

But this wasn't Lucrecia. This was Jenova. Someone who hadn't asked for any part in it, but embraced him as her child just the same.

A ripple of unease disturbed his calm. She didn't resent him for it, deep down, did she? He was a product of her violation.

_How could I blame you for something you had no part in?_ came her voice in his mind, and she opened her eyes to meet his. She was awake after all.

_I did have a part_ , he thought.

_And do you resent me for mine? After all, carrying my cells meant a life of suffering and isolation for you._

_No_ , he thought vehemently. _No, of course I don't resent you._

_Then we're the same, you see? Neither one of us chose this, but it bonds us._

Sephiroth relaxed. It did, didn't it? They were the only two who'd been party to that against their will.

Although...

Vincent hadn't consented, had he? He had never wanted his son used for an experiment.

_But he thought you were someone else's, so he didn't make much protest, did he?_

Maybe not, Sephiroth had to concede. And maybe he _was_ someone else's, though the thought made him grimace. He kept pushing Vincent away, but he didn't _want_ the man to be a lie. Flawed as he was, anyone was better than Hojo.

Even a father who might have attacked his mother in the night?

Jenova was still watching him, but she didn't comment. Sephiroth sat up in bed and swung his feet to the floor. Zack, of course, was still asleep, never the early riser.

And now, there was no need to wake him. There were no more missions. If they were done with Shinra, then they were done with being soldiers. Sephiroth looked down at his hands. What did that make him then?

He didn't know yet, but for once, he knew what he wanted in the moment.

"Would you care for breakfast, Mother?" he asked her.

"Hadn't you better deal with Vincent first?" she said.

Of course. After last night, she couldn't be at ease until he'd gone on his way. "You're right," he said. "I'll take care of it."

He dressed, save for his armor, and his fingers slowed as he buckled his coat. He hadn't worn the standard SOLDIER uniform in years, but people had come to associate these clothes with his command. This was the uniform of the Great Sephiroth.

Was it time for that to change, too?

Not today.

Sephiroth stepped out into the hallway to find Vincent asleep on the floor beneath the windows. He looked pathetic. Barefoot, his ruined boots discarded in the corner, his thin body curled beneath that cape as though it were all he had in the world.

And if Sephiroth rejected him, wasn't it? The same as his mother... Neither of them had anyone else in the world. Neither of them _knew_ this world, they'd been kept out of it for so long.

Why was he comparing them?

Sephiroth shut the door behind him. "Vincent," he said.

The man stirred, then slowly sat up. He lifted his clawed hand as if to rub his eyes, then thought better of it. "Sephiroth," he said, and faltered on saying anything more.

"You wanted to be on your way, didn't you?"

"Yes..." Vincent got to his feet, and glanced down at himself. His ruined shirt and his borrowed pants and bare feet. He frowned.

"There's a general store next door," said Sephiroth.

"I don't have any money."

"Of course you don't," Sephiroth acknowledged wryly. Nothing but the clothes on his back and his weapon, which Hojo had probably left him as some sort of twisted joke. Now Sephiroth had taken it, and the holster lay somewhere in the yard out back, where it had torn loose. "I'll pay for it," he went on. "And, you can take the truck."

"Truck?" Vincent repeated.

"You didn't think we walked here, did you?"

Vincent gave his head a shake. "No. But..."

"I doubt they've changed much in the past twenty-five years, but you can take Cloud, too, if you need a driver."

"You're generous this morning."

Sephiroth shrugged. "No reason to be stingy with things I don't need."

They left the inn, ignoring the innkeeper as he attempted to start a conversation, and stepped out into the morning air. The rain had stopped, but it must have continued throughout most of the night because the ground was muddy, and the world smelled of damp.

"I realize I never actually apologized," said Vincent, "for last night. I caused you alarm over Jenova, and I attacked you. I'm sorry."

Sephiroth frowned at him. Vincent didn't care that he'd hurt Jenova, he only cared that it had caused Sephiroth grief. Was that enough of an apology? If Vincent had been the one to attack _her_... It was plain he'd disliked Jenova from the beginning, but he hadn't shown himself to be easily riled. Perhaps he didn't like that she had taken on the role of his mother; perhaps he took it as an insult to his beloved Lucrecia.

Could he forgive that?

"It doesn't seem you did any serious harm," he said coolly. "But you should learn to control yourself."

"I know," said Vincent. "Perhaps it's for the best, my going away for a few days. If it happens again, it won't be around you."

The statement made Sephiroth uneasy, for some reason. If he wasn't there... "What if you can't change back, on your own?"

Vincent's hand stilled on the door to the general store, just short of pushing it open. He looked at Sephiroth, a quiet fear flashing across his face. "I..."

"I'm sending Cloud with you," Sephiroth decided, "to watch your back. There's little danger between here and Cosmo Canyon, so if nothing catches you off-guard, you should be fine."

Right?

Vincent's expression changed, warming with the offer. "...thank you," was all he said, but there was something more behind it. Did he think it was kindness Sephiroth was showing him?

He just wanted a definitive answer. He couldn't get one if Vincent lost his humanity in some beast before he could even submit to a test. That was all.

Maybe it wasn't all. If this really was his father, Sephiroth didn't want to lose him to that before he'd had a chance to know him. Funny, a few days ago he'd never thought to want a father, thought he already had the worst possible, and now it was something to fear losing.

He didn't like that. Maybe it was a point in Hojo's favor. He'd be _glad_ to be rid of that man.

Vincent finally opened the door into the shop, and they stepped inside.

Word must have spread about how Sephiroth had supposedly taken care of the monsters, and the shopkeeper was perfectly solicitous, never saying a word about Vincent's state of dress despite her obvious curiosity. It made Sephiroth vaguely uncomfortable with his lie, but he could hardly tell these people that the monsters were nothing to worry about because his mother would care for them.

He wondered what kind of lives they would be able to lead. The one that had broken loose during their first inspection had screamed in such pain, part of him still felt it would be better to put them all down. What kind of existence was that?

His gaze fell on Vincent, who had sat down to wipe his feet so he could pull on new boots. What had _he_ felt, as that monster? How far from human had been the thoughts in his head? How far from himself?

Sephiroth didn't know how to ask him, and he didn't know if he wanted the answers.

Sephiroth paid for the clothes and for some provisions for the trip. Vincent thanked him again, but it was the company's money, and it hardly bothered him to use it. Though, he supposed money was something he would have to start worrying about. Maybe he ought to claim his final paycheck before leaving, he considered wryly.

He bade Vincent wait outside the inn, recovered his gun from the room, and confirmed that Cloud hadn't shown up in the time they'd been gone. He handed Vincent's weapon back to him as they crossed the square to the boy's house. Sephiroth knocked on the door.

A woman answered, obviously Cloud's mother, though they hadn't been introduced. "Oh!" she exclaimed and, glancing behind her, stepped out into the street to speak with them. "I heard the mission was over, so I thought I'd let him sleep," she said, addressing him without the cautious respect most people granted him on a first meeting. She spoke to him instead like a peer. "You aren't leaving already, are you?"

"Not precisely," said Sephiroth. "But there is an errand I need to send him on."

"An errand?"

"Yes. It may take a few days."

"That sounds like a little more than an errand," Cloud's mother remarked, arching her eyebrows.

Sephiroth had no response to that. "Could you wake him?" he asked.

"I can," she said, "but I'm not going to let him skip breakfast just because you're impatient. I'll even invite you to join us; I don't know how often it is that _you_ sit down for a home-cooked meal."

"I have other plans," said Sephiroth. "But, you can take Vincent off my hands."

"Oh?" Her attention shifted. "You aren't Shinra. Are the two of you related?"

They exchanged glances. Neither of them answered her.

"Sephiroth," Vincent began quietly, "before I leave, I do still need..."

"...the blood sample," Sephiroth finished, frowning. His mind went to the lab equipment in the mansion basement, but it was not only old but unnecessary. He'd been through enough tests to know. "A dried sample should be perfectly viable. Mrs. Strife, do you happen to have a napkin, and something sharp?"

"Well, yes," she said, "but now you've got me deathly curious." She waited, looking between them in hopes of some explanation, but when neither of them provided one, she sighed and disappeared into the house.

"Can I ask you one favor while I'm gone?" said Vincent.

"What is it?"

"Don't go back to the reactor with her. Not yet."

Sephiroth didn't answer right away. Did Vincent worry that Jenova was lying about that, too? That she wouldn't be able to control them? Or, maybe he worried how she might command them... Even though her anger was with Shinra, not the village. Still...

"I hadn't planned on returning just yet," he said, "so I suppose I can wait for you."

Vincent nodded. "Thank you."

Cloud's mother returned shortly with a cloth napkin and a kitchen knife. Sephiroth cut his thumb and let the blood soak into the cloth. He handed it to Vincent, and they parted without saying much of anything. Sephiroth returned to the inn, and his eyes fell on the telephone in the lobby.

"Wanting to make another call, are you?" asked the innkeeper, and this time he didn't grumble so much at being kicked out of the room.

Sephiroth dialed Tseng. "Have you found anything?" he asked.

"Yes," was the answer. "I have."

"Well?"

"Vincent Valentine was indeed a member of the Turks for roughly six years. He was assigned to Professor Gast for the last two of them, and was reported killed on Mt. Nibel in the performance of his duties. Dr. Lucrecia Crescent was a member of Gast's team at the time, but there isn't much to her file. Evidently she left the company a few months after Valentine's death."

"Left?" Sephiroth repeated. "You mean to say she's alive?"

"I have no idea," Tseng stated calmly. "Her record ends with her resignation twenty-five years ago."

Sephiroth hesitated. Just because it was in her official record didn't make it true. After all, Vincent wasn't dead.

"Was she married?" he asked.

"Yes," Tseng confirmed, "but her husband's name isn't listed."

Hojo. He never would have wanted Sephiroth to find a connection like that, would he? Her child couldn't have been listed either, unless Tseng had chosen to omit it. "Was it Hojo who reported Vincent's death?"

"Correct again, though Dr. Crescent corroborated the report. Gast was at Headquarters at the time."

Sephiroth frowned. More of Hojo's lies, or had his mother betrayed Vincent by choosing to cover for her husband? Had she known Vincent was locked in that basement?

But if she'd lived, if she'd chosen Hojo, then why hadn't he known her? Something _must_ have happened to her. Maybe Hojo had forced her out anyway. Or...

A chill ran through him. Lucrecia must have had Jenova cells in her own body, after the pregnancy. Had she become, to Hojo, nothing more than another test subject? Had she ever really left Shinra? Had Hojo kept all three of his parents locked away from him, all these years?

"Have both files ready for me for when I return to Midgar," Sephiroth told Tseng. "I'll want to see them."

"Understood."

"Did you have any trouble accessing them?"

"No," said Tseng, "but access is restricted outside Shinra executives, and the Turks."

"You mean, SOLDIER has no access?"

"Correct."

Sephiroth fought back a scoff. How obvious. "Thank you for your assistance then," he said.

"Of course," said Tseng.

Sephiroth hung up the phone. Why did it feel like so many of these answers only brought him farther from knowing anything? What sort of person had Lucrecia really been? Was there still a chance for him to find out for himself?

_Are you worried you could be like her?_

Maybe. She didn't sound like someone who thought of anyone but herself. Did people think otherwise of him?

_Sometimes we have to be selfish for our own survival. It isn't the same._

Sephiroth glanced above him, to where Jenova waited. Today wasn't about survival. He called the innkeeper back to ask him about breakfast and then returned to the room.

Zack woke when the food arrived, though Sephiroth wished he'd gone on sleeping. Zack didn't share Vincent's obvious antipathy towards Jenova, but he asked silly questions. He was in the way. But after the meal was over, Jenova at last said the words he'd been most eager for.

"Well, then. Shall we get to your first lesson in the ways of the Cetra?"

"I would like nothing more," said Sephiroth.

"Can I watch?" asked Zack.

"No," Sephiroth found himself snapping, and his friend looked crestfallen. He tried to go on more gently. "I want some time alone with my mother. That's all."

Zack nodded. "You're right. I get it. But you absolutely have got to show me if you learn anything cool, all right?"

Sephiroth let out a sigh; Zack really was a child sometimes. "No promises," he said.

He and Jenova left the inn, and she led the way north out of the village, into the valley beyond. The Nibel mountains surrounded them on all sides, and the sun had yet to climb high enough for its light to touch the earth between them.

"He really finds you fascinating," Jenova remarked, "that friend of yours."

"Fascinating?"

"He always wants to know everything that's going on. Being in your orbit has given him so many stories. He must be dying to relate them to someone."

Sephiroth shook his head. "Zack likes to talk, but he's loyal. He's not about to go spilling my secrets."

"You have a lot of faith in him," she observed.

"He's earned it. After all, it hasn't mattered one wit to him that I'm not human."

"That seems like a low bar for friendship. You're better than human. You're a Cetra."

Sephiroth glanced at her. He'd always wanted to think that--that whatever made him different made him superior, even as he worried it meant there was something wrong with him. But it struck him differently, hearing her say it aloud like that. "Some humans aren't so bad," he said.

"Can you name any others, for certain?"

He faltered. Most of his relationships were strictly professional, and with members of a company he now understood to be his enemy. He hadn't made up his mind yet about Vincent, if the man could still be called human, so _was_ he certain of anyone besides Zack? The people of this village seemed fine, on the surface, but he didn't know them.

"Do you think we'd be safe among these villagers," Jenova wondered, "if they were to find out what we are?"

"We're stronger than they are," Sephiroth reasoned. "We're in no danger from any of them."

"But you agree. They would hardly accept us."

Zack had. How much of an outlier was he? He stood out in SOLDIER, Sephiroth knew, so maybe he stood out in general. Sephiroth remembered the distrust the villagers had shown after he'd shut himself up in the Shinra mansion--worried for themselves. Not unreasonable, but not remarkable.

"Most humans fear what they don't understand, it's true," he said. "Maybe that's a reason to pity them."

Jenova said nothing, her expression falling into a frown, as though she thought his response too forgiving.

"...were they enemies of the Cetra, in your time?"

Jenova considered the question. "They were enemies of the Planet," she decided. "I see that hasn't changed."

"We can begin to rectify that, you and I," he proposed.

"Yes," she agreed. "But first I must teach you. Being raised by them has left you as ignorant as they are."

The village was out of sight behind them, and they came to a stop in the shadow of the mountains.

"Where do we begin?" Sephiroth asked eagerly. "Will you teach me to understand our connection? So I can know your mind, too?"

"I think it best we begin with something easier, more familiar to you. You're used to casting magic using materia, correct?"

"Yes..."

"You don't need that, being what you are."

Sephiroth blinked, but it was obvious when she pointed it out. "Materia is only a conduit. A vessel for the knowledge of the Ancients."

Jenova smiled. "Precisely. But you _are_ a Cetra. You understand that magic intuitively, though you've never realized it. You only need to learn how to harness that consciously."

Sephiroth nodded. "I'm ready," he said.

It took time. The sun crested the mountains and continued its journey over the valley. But by the time its light shown behind the western peaks, he had mastered it. Every spell he had ever channeled through materia, he could summon it instead through himself, unreliant on anything else.

Though he thought he would feel... more connected, to the Planet. The source of the magic. Jenova assured him that it answered his call so perfectly that he would never feel that it was something outside of himself. He shook it off.

"That's enough for today," said Jenova. "You've made great progress."

"You did call them simple tricks, though," Sephiroth recalled. "Elemental magic."

"It's true," she conceded, "these are things a child would know. But, you never had the chance for that upbringing. The rest will come, in time."

Sephiroth nodded, mollified. In time, he thought. "Shall we head back?"

"You go on. I want to stay a while, here in the company of nothing but the Planet. You understand."

He did. Being around humans was hard for her, and even Sephiroth's company had to be draining. He'd never fit in with them, but he'd never known any other kind of people. Their ways of thinking and behaving would always be a part of him, something even she couldn't train out of him entirely. He was of two worlds, and for a while, she only wanted to be in hers.

Sephiroth walked unhurriedly back to the village. The streetlamps were beginning to flicker on as the sun sank behind the mountains. He paused as he reached the gate to the mansion, and looked up at the dark building beyond. Had it really only been a few days ago that he'd shut himself up inside it, seeing nothing? He'd been so close to believing that he'd found all there was for him to know.

There was so much more.

His feet carried him back inside of it anyway, though different thoughts occupied his mind now that he knew something of what had happened here. Who among them had played the piano, and who had taken the time to sit for tea? Whose things had been left behind here, and could he call any of them an inheritance? Whose pet project was the greenhouse upstairs? Which rooms had his parents slept in?

Maybe he shouldn't have sent Vincent away. After finding Jenova, he hadn't expected to feel that anything was missing, that any answers were beyond his reach, but she didn't know about this world, and it was still half of what he was. And, he had to admit, it was more grounded in things he knew, easier to imagine. He'd only ever imagined human things.

He wondered if some part of him still wanted to _be_ human. Being Cetra was better than human... but it was lonelier.

Sephiroth returned to the inn, finding Zack there, finishing up a solitary dinner.

"Hey!" he greeted, waving a fork. "How'd it go today?"

Struck by a sudden impulse, Sephiroth didn't answer him. Instead, he strode to the Masamune, plucked the materia from the hilt, and tossed the first of them to Zack.

"Woah, careful. What is this, am _I_ getting a lesson?"

"I'm giving them to you," Sephiroth declared. "I don't need them."

Zack stared, hands frozen awkwardly around fork and materia both. "What?"

"You do remember what materia is, don't you?"

"It contains the knowledge and wisdom of the Ancients, so that... oh. Oh! So you're casting spells all on your own now?"

Sephiroth shrugged. "It's basic, for a Cetra. But I'm late coming to all of this."

"Hey, I'm impressed," said Zack, carefully setting the materia down on the table. "You figured that out in just one day. I bet there were Cetra who took weeks and weeks at it, back in the day."

Sephiroth snorted. "You have no idea what the Cetra were like, Zack."

"Yeah, but I know you. You're an overachiever. But that's great, you know, that she taught you that." He paused, finally noticing. "Where is she, anyway?"

"She wanted to have some time alone with the Planet. It's... been a long time, since she's had the freedom to do that."

"Yeah... I guess that's been hard on her, on top of everything else. I can't even imagine. How do you start coming to terms with all that? She seem like she's adjusting okay to you?"

"She seems uneasy being among humans," Sephiroth considered, "but I think she's doing remarkably well given the circumstances."

Zack nodded thoughtfully. He fiddled with his fork, tapping it against his plate. "And what about you? Is she helping you deal?"

"It's... good to be understood. There is no pretending with her."

"You think it's something you'll have to keep secret from everybody? The whole Cetra thing?"

"Did you expect otherwise?"

Zack shrugged. "Not really. It just sucks, you know? If there's only a handful of people you can be honest with."

"I don't care to talk much about myself anyway," Sephiroth pointed out.

"I guess. Ahh, maybe I'm just projecting. You know I'd hate it."

Sephiroth joined him at the table and set the rest of the materia down at its center. Then, remembering what his mother had said to him, he looked at Zack, watching his face carefully. "You would never tell anyone, would you?"

Zack blinked at him, his expression completely open. "About you? Of course not, not if you don't want me to."

"That's what I thought."

"Your mom worried about you playing with humans?" Zack asked with a smirk.

"Playing?"

"It's just- you know. It's pretty normal for moms to worry about some of the friends you make growing up."

"Not when you're an adult?" Sephiroth wondered.

"Uh... Actually, I guess I wouldn't know," Zack admitted, scratching his head. "I haven't talked to my mom in... a while."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. We were never that close. My folks are nice people and all, but they never really _got_ me. Wonder if that would've been different if they could literally read my mind..."

"I'm not sure that's a power anyone wants," Sephiroth commented wryly.

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't want to know how your mind works, Zack. It's... more interesting, being on the outside."

Zack regarded him flatly. "You know, I know you don't mean it that way, but I'm going to take that as a compliment."

Sephiroth smirked. "So what did you do today anyway? You didn't spend all day at the inn."

"Oh, I hung out with Tifa."

"I thought you had a girlfriend."

"I don't know whether to be happy you actually remembered that, or offended that you think I'd cheat on her."

"You are very friendly with her," Sephiroth pointed out.

"I'm friendly with everyone!" Zack protested. "Besides, there's nothing wrong with a little harmless flirting."

"Is that right?"

"Yeah. Anyway, you're one to talk."

Sephiroth sat back. "Me? I- don't even know how to flirt."

"The girls are all over you, man."

Sephiroth shook his head. "It's the war hero nonsense. It doesn't seem to matter what I say to them."

"Hmm." Zack tapped his lip thoughtfully. "Well, this is something your mom's definitely not gonna teach you. And... you probably don't wanna learn it from Vincent, either. Nice enough guy, but uh, picking up married women is kinda questionable."

"I'm not interested in picking up women, Zack."

"Oh! Guys?"

"I meant--" Sephiroth felt his face grow hot. "Look, I have one friend. I... want to know how to deal with that, first."

Zack's eager grin softened into something more genuine. "Well, I'm flattered. All right. But I _am_ basically an expert on friendship, and you're a fast learner, remember? We'll have you picking up the genders of your choice in no time."

Sephiroth threw him an exasperated look. He'd never spared any thought for this nonsense before. Then again, he'd named it nonsense because it was a game he didn't know how to play, yet another thing that left him on the outside.

Zack lifted a finger. "Two days ago, you didn't even acknowledge we were friends. I'd call that significant progress."

Maybe it was. A week ago, he'd prided himself on being a loner. Insisted on it. That had begun to crumble at the slightest chance that he might have family that wasn't Hojo. Having even a handful of people he could be honest with... That was new.

"...as my friend," he said slowly, "what do you honestly think of my mother?"

Zack screwed up his face in discomfort. "Honestly? I don't know," he said. "I'm still not clear exactly what happened with her and Vincent last night, but she... kinda puts me on edge. I don't know how much of that's just from how she looks, though."

"Because she looks like someone you know?"

"You know how much you and Vincent look alike? It's like that, with her and my girlfriend. Except she hasn't got any sisters."

Sisters? "Zack, this woman is a memory of mine, from seventeen years ago. She wouldn't look like that today."

"Seven..." Zack was staring at him again, and then he shook his head. "No, no, but I've met Aeris's mom. They're _not_ the same woman. That'd be crazy."

"Aeris... I've heard that name before."

"Sure, I've talked about her before, you just don't really listen."

"I always listen. You've been dating her since last April, but you've only ever referred to her as your girlfriend."

"Wait, you listen?"

Sephiroth held up a hand to quiet him. "...I remember now. Aeris. She was a heroine in a storybook Professor Gast favored." A book Hojo had disposed of shortly after taking over the department.

Zack relaxed. "So, another coincidence."

"I wonder."

"Please don't drag my girlfriend into the weird that is your life," said Zack, putting his hands together.

"You don't want me to meet her?" Sephiroth wondered.

"Not if you're bringing this kind of vibe, no."

"I suppose I'll just have to ask Hojo then, when I go to see him."

"I thought you hated Hojo."

"Yes, I'm going to kill him."

Zack sat back in his chair. "Oh. When did you decide on that?"

"I've wanted to for a long time, but now there's nothing to prevent me. I won't let Shinra own me anymore."

Zack was quiet for a moment, looking at him as though trying to figure out whether he were serious. "...you think you'll need backup?" he asked.

"You're volunteering," Sephiroth observed. It wasn't even a question.

"Yeah, I guess I am."

Sephiroth shook his head, unable to help a small smile. "I'm going to wind up owing you a lot of favors, aren't I?"

"It's not really in the spirit of friendship to keep track," said Zack. "But yeah. Probably. Don't worry, though: I'm a simple guy, with simple needs."

Simple needs. "I haven't eaten since this morning," Sephiroth said. "I don't suppose you want anything else?"

"Oh! See if they've got dessert, will you? I forgot to ask."

"All right," Sephiroth agreed. Simple.

He left the room and descended the stairs slowly, feeling strange. He didn't know what to name the feeling, except to think that his life before hadn't been in color. It had been nothing but grey, and he'd not only allowed it to be that, but encouraged it. Now, there was so much in it that he didn't recognize.

He was beginning to belong to people, and maybe in some ways it _could_ be enough.

But then he had to laugh at himself. How sentimental he was becoming.

Was it a bad thing?

Everyone in his life had discouraged it, save Zack. And how many of them had sought to control him, for their own purposes? His _feelings_ were something they had no use for. To live in them now was a kind of rebellion.

His bond with his mother was sentiment, surely. Something Hojo had never wanted him to have, because in the end, it would make him stronger.


	7. Chapter 7

Cloud took the first shift driving; not that the truck's controls proved any great mystery, but he said he preferred it, and Vincent was still tired. At least the beast in his veins was quiet, but he wondered if it would return once he'd rested, waiting somewhere just beneath his skin.

When he slept, nightmares enveloped him, a familiar icy mire of despair. He watched as Hojo raised his son in the wake of Lucrecia's death, but it was worse than anything he imagined in his waking hours, because in the nightmare, he hadn't been locked away. He was there for every moment of it, following Hojo's instructions, complicit in his son's dehumanization. He was no more help to Sephiroth than he'd been to Lucrecia.

Maybe Sephiroth was better off without him.

The thought lingered as he woke, and in an attempt to push it away, he sat forward to scan the landscape to determine how far they'd come. But rising in the east were the mountains surrounding the crater lake... The sight made his heart ache. Only a few times had they been able to escape to it, but alone in that place with Lucrecia, he had been able to imagine she belonged only to him. It was the happiest he had ever been.

In their absence, had other lovers found the cave hidden behind the waterfall? Had they carved their names together in the rock, foolishly thinking they might create a testament to an eternal love?

His feelings remained all these years later, even if she had declared an end to hers well before his slumber. She hadn't loved him more than anything, more than her work, more than her fear of Hojo. And now Sephiroth had him wondering, how enduring would have been her love for her son?

He felt heartsick, questioning her, but he could see the damage Hojo had done to their son, and even had she lived, she would have allowed that man a hand in raising him. Vincent could fantasize all he wanted about her changing her mind and choosing him after all, but when he looked at all she'd said and done...

Had he been a fool?

Lucrecia had never made any promises she hadn't kept. She had spoken sometimes of the same fantasy, of a life with just the two of them, but in her mind it had only ever been that. A fantasy. Their time together had been a respite from Hojo and nothing more.

"We're almost at the river crossing," said Cloud, mistaking his long stare for a confusion as to their location.

Vincent sat back. "Yes," he said. "The ferry, still?"

"I think so. It's been a while since I've been there either."

Vincent wondered how long he had been away from home, letting Shinra turn him into a soldier. He was so _young_. About the same age that Sephiroth had been, when Shinra had sent him to war.

Would that have bothered him, before? He'd known what sort of beast Shinra was when he had joined the Turks, and he'd thought nothing of it. It was only the fear of losing Lucrecia to that beast that had shaken his complacency. And, even that hadn't been enough. He hadn't done enough.

After a short silence, Cloud spoke up again. "Sephiroth was acting weird again last night. With that Jenova woman."

Vincent glanced at him. "He sees her as his mother. I'm sure he's wanted to meet her for a long time."

"...is that why we're doing this now?"

"Hm?"

"Proving you're his father. You think he'll be like that with you, too?"

Vincent shook his head slowly. "No. I don't expect that at all."

He was lucky that Sephiroth hadn't already rejected him, but he didn't want what Jenova had with him. He wanted to _earn_ Sephiroth's trust, respect, affection--not to manipulate his way into them with false promises and the violation of boundaries.

Vincent took over driving south of the river, as the terrain began to change. It was unfamiliar to Cloud, but Vincent saw little change in the landscape. The canyon walls that rose around them were as they always had been. Not everything, at least, had rushed on ahead of him.

They arrived at Cosmo Canyon late in the afternoon. As they climbed the long stairway, the settlement that came into view was not so drastically altered either. A few new buildings jutted from the canyon walls. Perhaps another windmill or a new shop stall. High above it all, the same observatory that Gast had helped these people to build.

A man stopped them at the gate.

"Excuse me," he said. "What exactly is Shinra's business here?"

Cloud glanced down at himself; he had taken his helmet off after they'd left Nibelheim, but he still wore the uniform. He looked uncertainly to Vincent.

"None," said Vincent. "We are no longer affiliated with Shinra."

The gatekeeper looked skeptical. "It seems like a very recent separation," he observed.

"For my companion, yes. It has been some years for me." Years that had passed him by, though he would have parted with Shinra in a heartbeat, had Lucrecia only wanted it. "I was once acquainted with Bugenhagen," he went on. "I had hoped I might seek the assistance of his colleagues now."

"Why not ask Bugenhagen yourself, if you know him?" asked the gatekeeper.

Vincent blinked. "He is still alive...?"

"When did you say you last came here?"

"...many years ago."

The gatekeeper shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I think I need more to go on, if I'm going to let you in."

"Please," said Vincent. "It's a personal matter, but an urgent one."

"Is something the matter, Ira?"

One of the guardians of the canyon had approached from behind the gatekeeper. Cloud took a step back in surprise and alarm, but Vincent had observed the unusual felines on his visits with Gast, even if he didn't recognize this one.

"Nanaki," said Ira, turning to the guardian. "This man says he's an acquaintance of Bugenhagen's and he's looking for his help, only they both seem suspicious to me."

"Do they?" Nanaki tilted his head up at Vincent. "How is it that you know my grandfather?"

Grandfather? Vincent wondered. "...I was a colleague of Professor Gast," he said, hoping the connection was still worth something. "I accompanied him on some of his visits here."

"Gast hasn't visited this canyon in decades," Nanaki stated.

"I know."

Nanaki regarded him unblinking for a long moment. "Well," he said, "I think you would pique Grandfather's curiosity, so I'll take you to him. But I must ask you to surrender your weapons."

"Very well," said Vincent.

They handed their weapons over to Ira, and Nanaki led them on through the gate, and up the many steps to the observatory. The complex was no different than Vincent remembered, but he felt strange coming here on his own business. Gast's research hadn't much interested him; he'd contented himself to be the man's shadow, letting his mind wander through Gast's conversations with the canyon's historians.

Cloud hung back near the door as they entered; Vincent had a shadow of his own now. Nanaki called out for Bugenhagen, and the old man soon floated down from the second floor on that contraption of his. Impressively, he looked even more wizened than when Vincent had seen him last; he had already been pushing a hundred then.

"Grandfather," Nanaki said in greeting. "These two strangers have come. One of them claims he once worked with Professor Gast."

"Is that so...?" Bugenhagen's eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark glasses, but Vincent felt his scrutiny. "Hmmm......"

"My name is Vincent Valentine," he said. "I was once employed with the Turks. You and I wouldn't have spoken much directly, but..."

"I do recall a young man of similar appearance used to keep vigil on some of our conversations," said Bugenhagen. "Almost like a statue he was! The strange thing is, you don't look a day older."

"It is a strange thing to me as well. But I wonder if it would come as any surprise to you that Shinra has been performing experiments on humans."

"...no. No surprise, certainly," said Bugenhagen, his shoulders slumping ruefully.

Nanaki spoke up cautiously. "Has Shinra really found a way to stop humans from aging?" he wondered.

"It seems to come with some unpleasant side effects," said Vincent.

"And to live forever..." Bugenhagen added, shaking his head. He glanced at Nanaki. "Still! I must confess to a flash of jealousy. If I could look half my age--well, I'd still be an old man, but it would be a marked improvement! But I digress. What is it you've come for? Do you have news of Gast?"

Vincent hesitated. "No... I did hear that he died some years ago, but the source is unreliable."

"An unreliable source, you say... I may just hold onto that, because it would be a pity if it's true."

"Indeed. But, my real purpose for coming..." Vincent faltered. Where did he even begin?

Bugenhagen tilted his head. "...something difficult, is it?"

Was it difficult? Vincent had never found it easy to ask for help, and he certainly hadn't expected to come here and ask it of Bugenhagen himself. But it was important, and he hadn't come all this way to be tripped up by his own lack of social ease.

"I've discovered that I have a son," he said. "At least, I am convinced he is my son, but he requires proof."

Bugenhagen glanced behind him at Cloud, but seemed to decide from the boy's manner that he wasn't the 'son' in question. He shifted his attention back to Vincent. "You came here for a paternity test?" he wondered.

"It was the nearest place I could think of that might be equipped for it. And, you aren't affiliated with Shinra."

"You don't trust a Shinra lab to perform it."

"No," Vincent confirmed.

Bugenhagen shook his head slowly. "This must be some scandal you're sitting on."

A scandal? Vincent had never even considered a public reaction to the information; it wasn't as though either he or Sephiroth would choose to announce it. Perhaps there were certain high profile members of the company whose reputations might be harmed if it were discovered they were the illegitimate children of an ex-Turk... Would Sephiroth's reputation suffer? Who knew. His background had to be as much of a mystery to the public as it had been to Sephiroth.

But it was from Sephiroth that the company had sought to keep this secret.

Vincent shook his head. "I have no interest in what the world at large would think. But my son... Shinra has lied to him his entire life. I need to give him some truth to hold onto."

After a thoughtful pause, Bugenhagen said, "Well, I daresay it _is_ something we can help you with, and I've got no reason to turn you away."

"But?"

"I have this feeling there's something significant you aren't telling me. This isn't just any question of paternity."

"...it isn't," Vincent conceded. "But if you'll help me regardless, then I can't tell you more. It would be against my son's wishes."

"Trying to be a good father?" Bugenhagen said, and he smiled. "I can respect that. Nanaki, would you mind showing them to the clinic?"

"Of course, Grandfather."

Their visit to the clinic was a more unpleasant business than he'd anticipated. Vincent handed over the napkin with Sephiroth's blood, and then of course they required a sample from him. The prick of the needle in his skin made that fire spark in his blood, as though this small thing was another opening. He clenched his fist and shut his eyes, concentrating on his breathing. Calm. There was no danger, no enemy. This was a mundane medical procedure that had never troubled him before.

The buzzing in his veins subsided, but worry took its place. What if he was so altered from what he had been before that the test wouldn't show a match? What if _Sephiroth_ was? Neither one of them was human, anymore.

"Don't feel you need to get up right away," the doctor told him, mistaking his reaction. "You can sit as long as you like."

"I'm fine," said Vincent. He wasn't. "How long until the results?"

"We should have them sometime tomorrow."

Vincent nodded. "Then I'll be back to wait then."

He left the clinic, Cloud following.

"You okay?" Cloud asked him, and he realized the boy had to hurry to match his stride. He forced himself to slow, and shook his head.

"A day isn't so bad," Cloud went on. "It might feel like longer, but... it's still just a day."

Vincent glanced at him. He was right, but that didn't make it any easier. "I'm worried about Sephiroth," he said. "The longer we're away..."

"What?" Cloud prompted, his brow furrowing. He didn't know about the night's altercation, and Vincent had dismissed his earlier observation on Sephiroth's behavior.

"Never mind," he said.

"...you think Zack's okay on his own?"

Vincent couldn't answer that the way Cloud wanted him to. Zack would likely be Jenova's next target, in one way or another. As Sephiroth's friend, Zack had sway with him, and she wouldn't like that.

Cloud hesitated, but declined to press his question, maybe sensing that Vincent had no optimism to offer him. Instead he asked, "Since you've been here before, do you know where the inn is?"

"Yes," said Vincent. "I'll take you."

He didn't think he would need sleep again tonight, but he wondered which was worse: his waking anxieties, or their subconscious manifestation in his nightmares? There was something easy, even comforting, about relinquishing control. He'd spent decades awash in his worst fears, powerless to stop them, but on some level he had always understood that there was nothing real to stop, that he had already failed.

He hadn't failed Sephiroth yet, but he might. Yes, that was worse.

Cloud parted ways with him at the inn; he booked a room and chose to take his dinner inside of it, away from the wary glances of the canyon's residents. The people here understood Shinra better than the villagers of Nibelheim, and they chose rightly to fear it. Even if Cloud was only a child, the uniform was an uncomfortable reminder of the canyon's tenuous independence.

Vincent sat at the bar and ordered a light meal, though he wasn't hungry. Did he need to sleep and eat now, only to feed the beast? Was it sated? He ate mechanically, not tasting the food.

What if the test didn't provide the proof he hoped it would? If he returned to Sephiroth empty-handed... Sephiroth had granted him a reprieve, but if it turned out they were nothing to each other, if Vincent was only his mother's lover... Would Sephiroth reject him completely? How could Vincent possibly reach him then?

A man slid into the seat next to him. "Well, yours is a new face," he said. "Come to study Planet life with us, have you?"

Vincent glanced at him. He was an older man--probably not so much older than Vincent should have been. The years had turned most of his hair grey and brought wrinkles to his eyes, and it was hard to say if he looked familiar.

"...no," Vincent answered, realizing some answer was expected of him.

"No?" the man repeated, tilting his head curiously. "Not many people visit this place for any other reason... You didn't run into some sort of trouble out in the canyon, did you?"

"I would prefer not to discuss it."

"Hmm. Sounds like trouble to me. Buy you a drink, friend? If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, but maybe you'll at least let me try to take your mind off of it. I can talk enough for the both of us."

Any other time, Vincent would have declined, but the hours ahead would be long. If he could force himself to focus on this man's rambling for even a little while, maybe it would make that time more bearable.

"...all right," he said.

The man ordered them each a beer, and Vincent stared at it as it was placed in front of him. When was the last time he'd had a beer? He'd never been much of a drinker, and Lucrecia had preferred wine.

He'd always deferred to her tastes, her choices, wanting nothing more than to make her happy.

He took a cautious sip.

"The name's Bugah, by the way," said the man, offering his hand.

Vincent blinked, looking at him anew. "Bugah?" he repeated. He had been one of Gast's closest friends here. They had spoken several times in this very pub, laughing together over drinks while Vincent waited in the corner, like a statue.

Bugah lowered his hand, giving up on the handshake, and gave Vincent an odd look. "That's right," he said.

"Bugenhagen mentioned you," Vincent lied. "You were a friend of Gast's, if I recall."

"You know Gast?"

"I... heard some things about him, when I worked for Shinra," said Vincent, not caring to explain his age. Bugah clearly didn't recognize him either.

"Good things, I hope," said Bugah. "Though, hell, he never seemed like he would fit in with those people, so maybe they don't speak so highly of him. I do wonder what happened to that man. Must be going on twenty years now since he visited us."

Twenty years. He'd come here after Vincent had gone into his slumber. While Sephiroth was a child, in his care.

"Did he say anything about his work, when he came then?"

"You mean his last visit?" Bugah wondered. "It was the strangest thing. I'll never forget it. You know, he'd come here plenty of times before to talk about his research, compare notes. He told me about that Ancient he found--the find of a lifetime!--and how Shinra was funding what he called the Jenova Project. He never could tell me the details, but he was immersed in that for _years_..."

Bugah paused to take a drink. "But the last time he came here, he was completely distraught, like I'd never seen him. He told me he'd done some terrible thing--that Jenova wasn't an Ancient after all."

Vincent froze. Even his breath stilled in his chest. "What?" he managed.

"I never could get out of him exactly what that meant," said Bugah with a shrug, "but I heard he cut ties with Shinra after that."

"You're _sure_ that's what he said?" Vincent said slowly, deliberately. "Jenova isn't an Ancient?"

Bugah nodded. "I remember it clearly, because it was so strange. If Jenova wasn't an Ancient, then what was she? And what could he have done that was so terrible, researching a cadaver? It's never made much sense to me."

It was second-hand information, and nothing that Vincent could possibly verify, but the moment he heard it, he'd felt it was true. Jenova was no Ancient.

But she certainly wasn't human.

She wasn't only manipulating Sephiroth, she was lying to him about what she was, what they both were. What had Gast _done_ to his son?

His body felt hot, and he pushed himself up from his seat.

"You all right?" Bugah asked, looking at him in concern.

"Excuse me," Vincent managed. "Thank you for the drink."

"You've barely touched it," he heard Bugah say distantly as he stumbled away from the bar. He concentrated hard on walking, and his legs carried him outside into the twilight. It was growing cooler now, and a welcome breeze reached his face.

He felt sick, but this time it wasn't the beast. He'd been complicit in all of it--from Sephiroth's conception to the progression of the experiment, and now to the perpetuation of the lies Sephiroth had been told about himself. Sephiroth still hadn't found the truth of his origins; Vincent hadn't had the answers for him, just another story.

He hadn't _known_ , but would that make any difference, after how many versions Sephiroth had heard of his past? Starting with what Hojo had told him...

Did Hojo know? Had Gast shared his findings before he'd gone? If he'd made the mistake of suggesting they put an end to the Project, then maybe that was what had killed him.

Vincent leaned against the wall outside the pub, wishing even Gast were here to help him now. Sephiroth seemed to respect him, and he might have had more to say on his findings. Just what _was_ Jenova, if she wasn't an Ancient and she wasn't human? Was she instead some kind of monster, like the one that lurked in his veins? Had they ever really seen her true form?

One by one, the stars were coming out. Nightfall. Vincent wondered how Sephiroth had spent the day, and what lies Jenova had fed him. How long would it take her to get what she wanted from him? How long would she use him before she discarded him? Or would she be able to get her hooks in him so deep that she never had to?

Vincent had no idea how he would get Sephiroth to believe him, but he had to _try_ to warn him. He couldn't stand by again and do nothing.

He took another few steadying breaths, went back into the pub, and strode across to the bartender.

"Is there a telephone I could use?" he asked.

"I'm afraid not," said the bartender with a shake of his head.

"Shinra owns all the phone lines," Bugah put in. "Haven't got one anywhere in the canyon."

Vincent's hands clenched at his sides. Then he had to go back.

But the test--

Damn the test.. was what he wanted to think, but it was important to Sephiroth. If he returned without the results, it would make it that much harder to convince him of the truth about Jenova.

One more day. Sephiroth had said he would wait before returning to the reactor. Vincent would have to trust in him, in his ability to think for himself. Surely he wouldn't allow Jenova to change his mind so swiftly.

Surely...

"You really should sit down," said Bugah. "I'm afraid I've given you some sort of shock, and I'm sorry. It seems I've been the opposite of helpful."

Vincent shook his head as he sat back down. "No. It isn't your fault at all."

Everything had been set into motion decades ago, when Gast had first found that thing. And they were all of them culpable for the nightmare they had visited on Sephiroth, and for whatever might befall him now. Gast, Hojo, Lucrecia, and himself... They had all done this terrible thing together.

Now, Gast and Lucrecia were gone, and Hojo would never regret what they'd done. The responsibility to fix it fell to Vincent, and he doubted he was up to the task. How could he be, when he hadn't been able to stop it in the first place, before it had even begun?

He wondered what Lucrecia would do if she were here. Would she feel as much regret as he did? Would she wish that she had chosen differently--not so that they could have a life together, but for Sephiroth's sake? What might she do for her son, for their son?

Anything. Vincent would do anything. It didn't matter what it cost him; he had nothing more to lose.


	8. Chapter 8

Sephiroth rose even before Jenova the next morning, and let his mother go on sleeping. It would be good, he thought, to have some time to himself to practice what he had learned. He wanted her to know that he was ready for more than 'tricks'--he wanted to know the real magic, magic integral to the Cetra way of life.

The innkeeper, an early riser himself, hailed him as he came down the stairs.

"Ah, good morning!" he said. "You've got to tell me, is it true what they're saying?"

"I don't know," said Sephiroth, supposing some nonsensical rumor had spread about how he had dealt with the monsters the other day. "What are people saying?"

"That you're actually an Ancient!"

Sephiroth froze halfway to the door. He turned, slowly. "...where did you hear that?"

"Birgit told me when she came in just now. Apparently everyone's talking about it."

"Everyone..." Sephiroth repeated, his own voice sounding distant. The innkeeper was saying something more, but he didn't hear it.

He stepped outside.

Next door, the couple who owned the general store stood outside, and their eyes fell on him as though they'd been waiting for him to emerge. Across the street, Lockhart was talking animatedly to Cloud's mother. Another woman watched him from her window. Sephiroth turned away and started walking, not thinking of a destination, not thinking of anything.

From somewhere, Tifa ran up to him and matched his pace. "I'm so sorry," she said.

Sephiroth managed to look at her. "What...?"

"I _told_ Papa you probably didn't want people knowing, but he's been telling everyone about it."

"Telling... what?"

"That..." Tifa lowered her voice, as though there might be someone nearby who hadn't heard yet. "That you're an Ancient. Like Zack said."

Sephiroth felt himself coming into focus. They had just passed through the southern gate into town, and he stopped and turned to her. "Zack told you that?"

Tifa nodded. "At dinner last night."

"What, exactly, did he say?"

"Well... we were talking about SOLDIER, and he said how you were different from the rest of them. That you were descended from the Ancients, and that's why you're such a powerful fighter." She paused, her mouth twisting anxiously as she looked up at him. "He also said... that those monsters at the reactor... that Shinra was trying to _make_ Ancients. But I don't think Papa's been spreading _that_ around. He and Zangan have been trying to keep that stuff about the experiments quiet."

Sephiroth broke her gaze, looking past her into town. Not the whole truth of it, not exactly. Zack hadn't mentioned the Jenova Project, or exposed his mother along with him, maybe because he realized that _that_ would be an entirely unforgivable betrayal.

But not more than an hour afterwards, Zack had assured him that he would never reveal this secret. He'd seemed so _earnest_ when he'd said it.

He was a better liar than Sephiroth gave him credit for.

"That's why you got so upset, isn't it?" Tifa asked quietly. "Because of what Shinra was trying to do at the reactor?"

Sephiroth looked back at her. "You shouldn't believe everything Zack says."

"Then it's not true?"

"How could it be?"

Tifa tucked her hair behind one ear. "Well... You aren't exactly _normal_ , are you? I mean... your eyes..."

There was no taking it back, was there? They had already recognized that he was different, and they readily accepted an explanation where he wasn't even human.

"So, the entire village knows?" he asked.

"I think so," Tifa said ruefully. "Word spreads fast when everybody knows everybody else."

"Thank you for telling me," Sephiroth said perfunctorily. "Now I need to go have a word with Zack."

Tifa looked as though she wanted to say something more, but instead she just nodded, and she didn't follow him as he turned and strode back towards the inn.

He took the stairs two at a time and slammed open the bedroom door. Zack leapt up and tumbled out of bed. Jenova sat up calmly.

"Mother, if you wouldn't mind," Sephiroth said carefully through his teeth, "I need a moment alone with Zack."

Jenova looked between the two of them and nodded. "Of course," she said.

In the time it took Zack to pick himself up off the floor and push his hair out of his eyes, Jenova had straightened her covers and walked to meet Sephiroth at the door. She offered him a rueful, knowing smile before she stepped outside. Sephiroth shut the door after her.

"What's going on?" asked Zack.

"Don't play dumb," said Sephiroth. "It might suit you, but I don't have the patience for it."

Zack looked bewildered, and his brow furrowed as he pretended to rack his brain over what Sephiroth meant. "I... I really think you need to spell it out for me, Seph. Everything was fine last night, wasn't it?"

"You neglected to mention you'd been talking about me with Tifa and her father."

"Uh... Tifa asked about you, sure. I guess I shared a couple stories. I may have told her about your shampoo usage. Thought you two could compare notes."

Sephiroth approached him slowly from across the room. "I'm not talking about any of that."

"...did I make a dumb joke?" asked Zack. "If I did, I'm sorry. I don't remember."

Sephiroth stopped scarcely a foot in front of Zack, and looked hard into his eyes. Nothing. There was nothing. "You don't remember telling them that I'm descended from the Ancients," he said.

Zack's eyebrows shot up and he put up his hands as if to block Sephiroth from advancing any closer. "Woah, woah, woah. I don't remember that because it didn't happen! I'd never do that to you."

"Do we have different definitions of 'never'?" Sephiroth asked archly. "The entire village is talking about it."

"Well, it wasn't _me_."

"No one else could have told them. Vincent and Cloud aren't here, and Tifa says she heard it from you at dinner."

"Wait, what?"

"When you had dinner with her and her father."

Zack shook his head vehemently. "But I didn't. She invited me, but I turned her down. Thought it'd send the wrong message, having dinner with her dad. I ate here. You saw me."

"I've also seen your appetite."

"You can't condemn me based on _that_!"

Sephiroth fairly snarled. "I'm condemning you based on the fact that you _told everyone what I am_! I didn't do that myself."

"But I didn't do it either!"

"Then how would you explain it?"

"I..."

Zack's mouth worked as he tried to come up with something, anything. Or was this fumbling, too, a pretense? Sephiroth didn't know anymore. He had thought Zack an honest, loyal friend, the only decent human being he'd ever known, but he wouldn't even admit to running his mouth.

What _was_ the point in lying about it now?

"Jenova," Zack said suddenly, his eyes widening with realization.

"What?"

"Seph, she's basically a shapeshifter."

Sephiroth's jaw set. "A shapeshifter who is using that ability to hide herself among humans, because she's afraid of them. She would never, knowing that fear, turn around and reveal me."

"She didn't do it to herself," said Zack.

Zack backed away as Sephiroth advanced on him again. His legs hit the edge of his bed and he sat down hard. Sephiroth stood over him.

"How _dare_ you insinuate that she would do this to me."

Zack looked up at him. "Seph... You've only known her a couple days. You've known me for _years_. You really think I'd do something like this? Does it seem like me?"

"She is my mother."

"She's..." He was going to say she wasn't; Sephiroth could practically feel the words die in Zack's throat. Instead he said, "Just because someone says they're your parent, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be good to you. You oughtta know, right?"

Sephiroth bristled at the reminder. How many years had he thought Hojo was his father? A father who had treated him like a possession, like a prized pet to be broken and trained. A father who had lied to him and used him for his own benefit...

Zack went on quietly, "I know you wanted things to be different this time around, but..."

"Stop," Sephiroth interrupted, turning away from him. "I don't want to hear it."

"I don't like saying it. But I think she's messing with you."

"No. You... You're human. Betrayal is in your nature."

Out of the corner of his eye, Sephiroth saw Zack slump forward, his arms on his knees, a posture of defeat. But what kind of defeat? Was it because he'd failed to turn Sephiroth against his mother? Or... because he was telling the truth, and Sephiroth wouldn't believe him?

But what motive could Jenova have for telling the villagers about his heritage? It only made it more likely that they might in turn find out about her, too. After what humans had done to her, after the decades she'd spent in Shinra's captivity, she'd never risk it.

No. Zack couldn't be telling the truth.

At best, he'd spoken carelessly and didn't want to admit to the mistake. At worst, he was a plant. Someone Shinra had placed near him to watch him, all the while pretending to be his friend. Zack wanted to separate him from Jenova because Jenova wanted revenge on Shinra, and together they would present a significant threat to the company.

At last Zack lifted his head. "I'll talk to everybody," he said. "Tell them I was joking."

Sephiroth turned back to him. "You admit to it."

"No. But if they think it was me, too, maybe it'll work."

He wouldn't even admit it. "It doesn't matter what you do. We're done."

"What do you mean, we're done?"

"We aren't friends. I'm not your superior officer. There's nothing to keep you here any longer."

Zack's lips parted, his mouth hanging open in disbelief for a moment before he spoke. "You want me to go?"

"Yes," said Sephiroth.

"...well, I can't do that."

"You can walk to the next town and--"

"That's not what I mean." Zack got back to his feet, looking determined. "We're not _done_. I'm not abandoning you just 'cause you're pissed at me right now. Jenova's up to something, and somebody's gotta watch your back."

Sephiroth stared at him, torn between frustration and... he wasn't sure what. "I don't want you here," he said.

Zack spread his hands. "Well, like you said, you're not my superior officer anymore, so you can't _order_ me to leave. Tough break there."

Sephiroth grit his teeth. "Zack..."

"Look, I'll... give you some space to cool down. See if I can do any damage control, like I said. Maybe it's not as bad as you think, you know? Just lemme get a shirt on first."

Sephiroth took several steps back, allowing him to move about the room and dress. Zack left with a rueful smile and a wave. As though they were still friends.

Was that supposed to impress him? That Zack wasn't willing to give up on him?

He didn't know what to think of it. Why had Zack lied to him? What was the ulterior motive? Why did everyone have to have an ulterior motive?

Sephiroth pressed a palm to his forehead. He didn't feel so angry anymore as he had, but something twisted in his gut like a poison. Every time he thought things were beginning to go _right_ , that the lies of his life had revealed themselves and he could move past them...

Maybe it would be easier to give up on ever knowing the truth. Hojo and Gast and Vincent and Zack... they were all liars. What could he hope to gain from them? At least now he could recognize the people around him for what they were.

A soft knock on the doorframe drew his attention. Jenova stood there, brow drawn in concern.

"I saw Zack leave," she said. "What happened?"

Sephiroth looked away. "You know, don't you?"

Jenova approached, walking back into his line of sight. "I thought you might want to tell me, in your own words."

"He told the villagers about me," he said. "They know I'm not human."

"I see..."

"But he won't admit to it," he went on, balling his hands in frustration. "He insisted it wasn't him, even in the face of all the evidence. He blamed you. As if you would impersonate him to play this cruel trick on me."

Jenova touched his arm. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know you trusted him."

"I thought... In all the world, I thought I at least had one friend. It's pathetic, isn't it?"

She shook her head. "No. It's only natural to want connection. You never had a community of your own kind, so you had to look for it elsewhere. And maybe it was true enough, for a time, while he thought you were like him."

Sephiroth felt something in him sink. Was that it? He had believed that what he was made no difference to Zack, but what it if it had? What if Zack felt he no longer merited the same level of consideration or loyalty, because he wasn't human? Their supposed friendship became a game, played at Sephiroth's expense.

It was worse, somehow, than the thought that that friendship had never been real to begin with.

"What was it like," he asked, "to have a community of your own people?"

"We were never lonely," she said, "and no one was outcast. We all understood each other, implicitly."

Sephiroth shook his head. "I don't know if I understand you that way."

"Keep your mind open, and you will, in time."

"...you must be lonely now," he said. "Everyone you knew died millennia ago, and now, all you have is me. A half-breed, raised to think like a human."

"Don't call yourself that," she said. "You are my son."

A selfish son, he thought. He did want her to be perfect, to be everything he had ever wanted in a mother, and he wanted her all to himself. He had brought her back to the village on the pretext of showing her this new world and helping her to experience her newfound freedom, but it wasn't what she had wanted. It was what _he_ wanted, to bring her into the life he already had, and the world he knew.

"...would you like to meet the rest of your children?" he asked her.

Jenova's expression softened in surprise. He could tell the proposal pleased her, but she asked, "Are you sure? You told Vincent you would wait."

Sephiroth shook his head. "Vincent would prefer we never went. He was only trying to stall me. Let's go. They've suffered long enough, alone in those pods."

Jenova nodded. "They have."

Sephiroth retrieved the Masamune, and together they left the inn. Zack was nowhere to be seen--seeking comfort with Tifa, perhaps, _friendly_ as he was--but more villagers now stood in the streets, clustered in little groups. Their voices lowered as Sephiroth walked past. He heard them anyway.

"I did think there was something odd about him," said one.

"Makes you wonder if there are any others living among us," said another.

"I'm not sure we could handle more than one. I'm starting to think those stories about him in the war _weren't_ exaggerated, you know? Scary thought."

Not one of them would look him in the eye. He was no longer a person but a curiosity. A thing on display.

It hadn't taken much, had it? All these years he'd spent among humans, trying to hide the strangeness of his upbringing in that lab, trying to learn their ways and fit in... All of it was undone once they learned he wasn't really one of them, and they put him right back there. They may as well have been observing a specimen behind glass.

At least now, he could leave them behind.

"This is the unfortunate truth about humans," Jenova said softly. "They're cowardly creatures who think only of themselves. That hasn't changed in two thousand years."

"Two days ago, they were ready to celebrate me for saving their village," he said bitterly. "Now they worry about more of my kind hiding in their ranks, plotting them harm."

"They worry about me, as they did in the time before. You know that if they thought they were any match for you..."

Sephiroth looked at his mother. "Did they attack you, all those years ago?"

She nodded. "I was discovered. And... confined. Ironic, maybe, that that allowed me to outlive the rest of my people."

"They were cruel to you... and I won't allow them to repeat it." He lifted his gaze to the mountains ahead. "It makes me wonder, about their so-called 'monster problem.' They say these creatures attacked them, but they've never detailed their casualties."

"You think they were the aggressors," Jenova concluded.

"Maybe," he said. "Those poor creatures can't disguise themselves, as you have, to be more acceptable to human eyes."

"It wouldn't surprise me at all, if that's what happened."

And acting on their false claims, he had killed one of his own misbegotten kin, taking it for a violent creature that needed to be exterminated. Even these things that had been human, now that they were something else, their own kind turned on them. Humans couldn't be relied upon to do anything else.

After a long climb, they reached the reactor, finding it the same as they'd left it. And yet, it wasn't the same. Jenova's pull was absent, but something new brushed against his mind. He was _aware_ of the creatures within, as he hadn't been before.

"I can sense them," he said, looking to Jenova.

"Your mind is more open now than it was even a few days ago," she said. "You're learning."

They entered the chamber, and Sephiroth approached the nearest of the pods. His gloved fingers traced the line where he had scored it with the Masamune the first time he had come here, when it had terrified him to have anything in common with these monsters.

He laid his hand flat, and instead of looking into the window, he tried to reach out in search of a connection. It didn't scare him now, not to be human. To be human was to be flawed, cowardly, traitorous. It was better not to be. These things had been forced to leave humanity behind; they hadn't chosen it, but he wondered if they would understand. Did they even remember what it was to be human? How much thought remained?

Sephiroth thought he could sense the agony, and very little beneath it. The mind he found was weak... pliable. He drew his hand back.

"They would have had me kill all of these creatures," he said, lifting his head to take them all in. "Blood on my hands at their behest."

"We can't allow them to get away with it," said Jenova.

Sephiroth nodded slowly. For a short time, he had entertained the notion that not all humans were as awful as those who worked for Shinra, but there wasn't really any difference among them, was there? The village boys here had gone off to join Shinra, and those who remained were complacent, if not complicit. He wondered if, when Gast had run the Jenova Project, the villagers had understood what was happening at that mansion, and had allowed it to go on, uncaring. Anything was permissible, as long as it didn't disturb their way of life.

They had never expected there might be consequences to their selfishness.

Footfalls on the catwalk outside. Sephiroth turned as Zack burst into the chamber and stopped at the bottom of the steps to catch his breath.

"What are you doing here?" Sephiroth demanded coldly. The villagers must have told Zack of his departure, but for him to follow, knowing he wasn't wanted...

Zack straightened up, still a little breathless. "To stop you... from making a mistake. You can't let them out, Seph."

"Why, because they're monsters? Inhuman? Would you lock _me_ up if you could?"

Zack shook his head. "It's not like that."

Jenova joined Sephiroth at his side, looking down at Zack. "Then why don't you explain what it is you're so afraid of?" she asked.

Zack looked back at her, his brow knit, actually seeming to debate whether to speak his mind or not. "It's you," he said at last. "You wanted this from the second we let you out. I don't know what you're up to, but I don't trust it."

"You're the one who can't be trusted," Sephiroth stated.

"Why do you have so much faith in her? You've never been like this with _anyone_."

"The only people I knew until now were human. They weren't worthy of it."

"I thought we trusted each other," said Zack. "I thought you trusted _me_."

"I was a fool to think I could."

That wounded look on his face again, but Zack looked between Sephiroth and Jenova and seemed to understand that it wasn't going to work. His gaze moved past them, skimming over the rows of pods, and then suddenly snapped back to Sephiroth.

"You still owe me that favor, right?" he said. "Well, I'm cashing it in. Don't do this."

Sephiroth faltered. The favor...

_You don't owe anything to a liar and a traitor._

He wanted to agree with her, but he'd given his word. Even if it was to a liar and a traitor, he was bound by it, as long as he was different from what Zack was.

But this was something he owed to his mother, and to the name of the Cetra. He couldn't leave these pitiable creatures trapped here, beholden to Hojo. Not for anyone could he do that.

"That's a favor I can't grant you," Sephiroth said, shaking his head. "But I'll honor the debt by sparing you."

"Sparing..." Zack repeated slowly, and his expression slackened in a dawning horror. "Spare me from what? What are you going to do?"

"The people of Nibelheim have stood by while horrors were committed before their eyes," said Sephiroth. "And then they had the audacity to ask that I murder these creatures whose only crime was not being human enough. Creatures made to be like me... They deserve their vengeance."

"Sephiroth, that's not vengeance. The villagers didn't _know_ what was going on here. They don't know what you've been through. They're not plotting against you. They were just scared."

"Ignorance is no excuse. They'll reap what they've sown." Sephiroth turned to Jenova. "Step back, Mother. It's time."

But before he could raise the Masamune, he saw Zack's hand reach for his sword. Zack hesitated, gripped the hilt, and then drew it. He held it firmly in front of him, the blade pointed at Sephiroth.

"...I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," said Sephiroth, but somehow it still hurt to see it. The last pretense of friendship, stripped away.

"I don't want to fight you," said Zack, "but I _can't_ let you do this. I can't let you hurt the villagers."

"You know you're no match for me."

"Maybe not," Zack said, and his smile was grim, "but what kind of guy would I be if I just stood aside?"

"Well... I see where your loyalties lie." Without taking his eyes from Zack, Sephiroth nodded to Jenova. "Stand clear, Mother. This won't take long."

He and Zack had sparred many times before, but Zack's initial behavior was unusual: he ran. Sephiroth didn't understand it until Zack struck his first real target: a tube feeding power to one of the pods. Of course. Zack might play the fool, but he was no idiot. He knew he couldn't defeat Sephiroth, but he might manage to take some of the creatures down with him.

Not knowing how long the pod would support the creature without steady power, Sephiroth diverted his attention from Zack long enough to strike open the latch. The pod burst open, the creature tumbled to the floor, and Zack hurled a Bolt spell at it. Sephiroth raised a barrier, reflecting the spell back on him, and Zack dodged out of the way behind the next row of pods.

Zack made a good run of it. He sabotaged three more pods before Sephiroth forced him to engage. The chamber grew loud with the hiss of the severed pipes, the clash of blades connecting, the clatter of their boots across the metal floors. Zack quickly fell to the defensive, and Sephiroth pushed him back, and back, but instinct left him failing to take advantage of the openings he saw.

This man had been his friend, his loyal subordinate. They'd never fought with deadly intent.

Sephiroth's gaze landed briefly on Jenova, watching them from just inside the doorway of the chamber that bore her name, cornered there by their violence. It had been people like Zack who had attacked her, people like Zack who had confined her. Even now Zack sought to kill the creatures he'd freed, the closest things Sephiroth might ever have to kin.

He had to remember that. This was a traitor, not his friend. Zack had never been his friend.

When the Masamune sliced a gash down his arm, Zack stumbled backwards and grit his teeth, but he didn't cry out. He adjusted his grip on his sword and kept fighting.

It was impressive, really. Another blow, and another, and still he kept on. But the wounds began to take their toll. His reactions slowed, he grew clumsy. Sephiroth at last struck Zack's sword from his grasp and kicked him hard in the chest, sending him tumbling down the stairs. The first of the creatures he'd released had recovered itself, and as Zack landed at the base of the staircase, it leapt for him.

"Stop," Sephiroth commanded, and it paused, crouched over Zack, to look up at him. "That isn't necessary."

"You still mean to spare him?" Jenova asked, stepping out from the doorway.

"I mean to keep my word," Sephiroth answered her. "He's in no condition to hinder us now."

Zack lay groaning, but he didn't get up. His blood had started to pool on the floor beneath him.

Or might he die from his wounds?

If he did... If he did, well, it would be his own fault for getting in the way.

Sephiroth turned to the nearest of the remaining pods and broke open its latch. Soon. Soon they would descend united upon the real monsters, upon the people capable of this level of cruelty. People who had made it seem like something desirable, to be one of them, who had planted it just out of his reach to make it all the more seductive. It had to be worth something if it was so hard-won.

But it wasn't. Just fool's gold. Finally he could see it. He had been born of two worlds, but he could choose one over the other, and at last, he was making the right choice.


	9. Chapter 9

The dirt roads of the country weren't made for driving fast, but Vincent pushed the truck as hard as he could. Cloud sat silent beside him, picking up on his grim mood but seeming afraid to ask.

Twilight had fallen on Nibelheim. The street lamps illuminated a crowd gathered in the square, and as Vincent brought the truck to a halt, something horned and hulking dragged a woman screaming from her home to join the rest.

Cloud slammed the truck door and ran ahead, forgetting his helmet. "Mom!"

She stood already with the crowd, and turned to clasp her son's hands eagerly as he joined her. There were some murmurs of surprise at his appearance, but most were too preoccupied to care.

Vincent's eyes swept over the scene, taking it in. He counted ten of the monsters hemming in the villagers, each of them tensed for action but waiting on some command. All attention was directed at the far end of the square, nearer the mansion.

Vincent approached, knowing what he would find there, and once he had shouldered his way through the terrified knot of people, he saw them: Jenova and, standing beside her with the Masamune held low at his side, Sephiroth. He hadn't waited.

Sephiroth's eyes fell on him as he reached the front of the crowd, but Vincent spoke first.

"Sephiroth, what are you doing? What's going on here?"

"So you've returned," said Sephiroth. "I wondered if you would."

Vincent drew the test results from a pocket, holding up the envelope as an offering. "You wanted proof. I have it."

"For all that that is worth," Sephiroth said dismissively, and Vincent searched his eyes for a trace of any other reaction. Just yesterday morning, it would have meant something to him, to _know_ that Vincent was his father. To know one part of himself for certain.

What had Jenova convinced him of? Where was Zack?

But if there was one thing to give him hope, it was that everything had paused. The monsters waited, the villagers waited, Jenova looked to Sephiroth, and Sephiroth's attention was fixed on him.

"To me, it means a great deal," said Vincent, drawing the envelope back to him. Again he was left with nothing but sentiment and hard truths. "And... I learned something more, from speaking to the elders at the canyon. Something Gast learned after you were born, something he was never able to tell you."

Sephiroth's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What are you talking about?"

"Jenova... isn't one of the Cetra. She never was."

Sephiroth looked sharply at Jenova. The facade of her face betrayed nothing, but the flicker of confusion on his suggested she may have let something else slip. Even if she hadn't granted him access to her thoughts or memories, there was a link there that didn't go entirely one way. Had Vincent caught her off guard? Had Sephiroth sensed it?

"You're lying," said Sephiroth, looking back at Vincent. His tone was accusatory, no longer so cool and dispassionate.

Vincent shook his head. "No. I don't claim to understand what it means, but I think when you heard it, you knew it was true, just as I did."

"The blood of the Cetra flows through my veins. I am not a monster."

"Whether you are or not depends on what you do here today. Not on what's in your blood."

"They deserve it!" Sephiroth cried, making a sweeping gesture with the Masamune. "They stood by and allowed all of it to happen. My mother's confinement, my birth, these pathetic creatures..."

The villagers stepped back from him, knotting closer together. Vincent's eyes picked out the likely fighters. The people who would try to hold off the monsters to allow the rest to escape. But there would be no escape, if Sephiroth couldn't be swayed.

"For their ignorance, they deserve death?" Vincent asked him. " _Think_ , Sephiroth. Don't accept what Jenova has planted in your mind. You've done worse yourself in service to Shinra."

"Shinra _used_ me."

"You think Shinra told these people the truth about their activities? We certainly didn't tell them about the Jenova Project; they barely knew we were conducting research. We took advantage of their hospitality and committed an atrocity under their noses."

Sephiroth studied the crowd with a frown, saying nothing.

Jenova spoke for the first time aloud. "Don't let him confuse you, my son," she said. "By his own admission, he was instrumental in the experiment that birthed you. Of course he wants you to forgive these people, because he's done much worse."

Sephiroth's expression grew cold again, and his grip tightened around the hilt of the Masamune. "Let him be the first, then, to face judgment."

"You're going to kill your own father?" The voice was Cloud's, and Vincent glanced at him, surprised that he would draw attention to himself, and for Vincent's sake.

"Why not?" Sephiroth asked. "What good has he ever been to me?" He turned back to Vincent. "I suppose you'll try to fight me, as Zack did. To say you can't allow me to hurt these people, to side with them against me."

So that was what had happened to Zack, Vincent thought grimly. The ally he'd hoped to have... Jenova had separated them from each other just as she'd separated each of them from Sephiroth. She'd understood their threat to her immediately.

But what was he now, on his own? Even if he let loose the beast, he wouldn't defeat Sephiroth, much less Jenova and the monsters along with him. He understood Zack's choice; it made sense for him. But Vincent knew that to choose to fight would be to lose a different battle altogether.

"No," he said.

Sephiroth was visibly taken aback. "What?"

"I won't fight you," Vincent stated. "If you feel that what you deserve from me is death, well... It strikes me as an easy punishment to bear. I failed you, then and now. How would fighting help you?"

Sephiroth stared at him, brow furrowed, head tilted slightly to one side as though trying to see him from a different angle. Vincent hadn't responded as he'd anticipated, and it was making him think.

"Shall I take care of it for you?" asked Jenova, and she took a step forward.

Sephiroth held up a hand to stop her. He turned to Tifa, who stood near the front of the crowd, holding her father's arm. "Tifa," he said. "Describe it to me in detail. When you invited Zack to dinner last night, what did he say?"

"W-what?" said Tifa, thrown by the question. It was so incongruously mundane, Vincent didn't quite understand it himself.

"I want to know," said Sephiroth.

Tifa's father put his hand over hers, and his weight shifted in readiness to propel himself in front of her, if he had to.

Tifa swallowed, forcing down her fear. "He- he turned it down at first. He said that he'd feel awkward with Papa there, and I thought he went back to the inn. But then a few minutes later, he knocked and said he'd changed his mind."

"Do you remember what time it was when he left?"

"I... It must have been a little after eight. I remember the clock chimed the hour."

Sephiroth's gaze held on her a long moment, his expression stony, and then he turned slowly to Jenova. "It was eight o'clock when I returned to the inn, and Zack was already there. So, where were you?"

He'd caught her in a lie, Vincent realized, a lie that she had used to turn him against Zack. Undoing that rift could be the key to walking him back from the precipice. Vincent held his breath.

"Sephiroth," said Jenova, "don't get caught up in these little details. You're misremembering."

"Am I? Perhaps you'd care to share with me _your_ memories of that evening? Or, any memories at all? What was it like in the time of the Cetra? What does the Planet's voice sound like?"

"I am offering you retribution. Greatness." She was losing him.

"I _want_ the truth."

Jenova looked back at him in silence for a long time before she gave a helpless shrug and shook her head. "You didn't want the truth. You wanted someone to make sense of your suffering, to give meaning to the acts of a foolish scientist who didn't know what he'd found. You wanted to be special. I would have let you be."

Hurt had crept into Sephiroth's expression, behind the anger. "Then you aren't..."

"One of the Cetra? Of course not. But we were well acquainted."

Sephiroth's lips parted, and he took a step back from her. "Two thousand years ago, disaster struck this Planet..." he murmured, as though reciting from something.

"You can still make your choice, understanding that," said Jenova. "You can be the disaster, or, fall prey to it. I'd been hoping for the former, but I'll make do without."

Sephiroth faltered. "I..."

Vincent stepped closer to him, within range of the Masamune. "You didn't want Shinra to use you. Don't let her do it either."

Sephiroth looked at him, that same look in his eyes as the day he'd found Vincent in that basement. A man in turmoil, desperate for something to hold onto. "If that is what she is," he said, "then isn't it what I am, too?"

"That isn't the only thing you are," Vincent told him. He approached near enough to take Sephiroth's right hand, and pressed the envelope into it. "It isn't the only thing you have."

Sephiroth's gaze fell belatedly to the envelope, as though he hadn't noticed how it had gotten there. Slowly, he lifted the Masamune, stabbed it into the earth, and tore open the results.

His eyes scanned the document within, so much more straightforward than the countless volumes that Gast had left behind. There was no need to theorize, no room for interpretation. Just a simple analysis with a simple conclusion: the probability of paternity.

"You're my father," Sephiroth said quietly, for the first time without any doubt or qualification. He looked up at Vincent. "It's actually true."

"It is," said Vincent. "And it always will be, whatever happens here today."

Sephiroth looked past him, at the faces of the villagers, and this time he really seemed to see them. The turmoil on his face slowly settled into a cold anger. He tucked the results away into his coat and turned to Jenova.

"You deceived me."

"About what I am, but not about what we are to each other. We are connected. My true nature is your true nature. We are one and the same."

Sephiroth shook his head. "I am not like you..."

"How many lives have you destroyed, single-handedly, in your time as a soldier? Can you honestly say you took no pride in it?"

"Honestly," Sephiroth repeated, and it was clear Jenova had made a misstep with that one word. "There is the difference between us. Yes, I've killed, and I've even enjoyed it, but I never had to manipulate anyone into following me. If I were to side with you... I would be giving up on a life free from deception. I wouldn't even know myself for certain, with you _always_ in my head... No. I am not some empty thing, to be imbued with someone else's purpose. I am... whole. As I am."

Jenova nodded. "Then... you be yourself," she said. "And I'll be mine."

Her disguise vanished, revealing not the pale woman they'd found at the reactor, but an entirely alien creature four times her size, a great tentacled monster. A collective gasp of horror rose up from the crowd, and even Sephiroth started back in alarm, hurriedly gripping the hilt of the Masamune and pulling it free from the ground. Vincent backed away with him.

"Where's Zack?" Cloud asked urgently from behind them.

Sephiroth glanced back at him, his face paling with dread. "I... I left him at the reactor."

"Is he dead?" asked Vincent.

"I don't know."

Someone screamed. One of the monsters had lunged into the crowd, tackling a man. Sephiroth's head whipped around.

"She's taking control," he said.

Zangan reached the monster first, knocking it off of the villager and engaging it. Vincent unholstered his gun, but Jenova herself was moving. "Sephiroth!" he shouted, taking aim for her head.

Sephiroth swung the Masamune, and a wall of fire burst up between Jenova and the rest of them. "Get the villagers out of here!" he said. "I'll hold onto these creatures as long as I can before she takes them from me."

Vincent didn't argue. He raised his voice. "Everyone, get moving! This is your chance!"

But fear held them paralyzed. The monsters remained like sentinels encircling the crowd, and Sephiroth stood deep in concentration. In the midst of the square, Zangan wrestled with his opponent, the only source of movement. Vincent watched for a clear shot, and fired. The monster reared back, creating another opening, and he fired again and again until it fell, and lay still.

"Come on!" Tifa shouted into the hush that followed. She pulled her father with her, and as she reached Zangan she offered her other hand to help him up. The three of them approached the ring of motionless creatures, and pushed their way through. Cloud went, too, guiding his mother with him. The other villagers followed their lead, and people began to run.

Vincent hung back. He reloaded his gun and watched for any signs of movement. One of the last people through jostled a monster, and it turned towards him. Vincent's bullet caught it in the head before it could act, and he left the square with the last of the villagers.

Cloud was urging as many people as would fit into the Shinra truck, and he tossed the keys to someone else, who leapt into the driver's seat as a knot of monsters broke from Sephiroth's control and gave chase. Cloud joined Vincent, covering the villagers as they fled.

The monsters didn't go down easily. One was bleeding from the head--the one Vincent had shot moments ago, on its feet again. They felled one for good before the other two reached them. Cloud pulled out his nightstick, and Vincent swung his claw, hoping it was worth anything as a weapon. He felt the pressure of it connecting, saw it score gashes across the monster's chest, but it retaliated in kind.

Its hand slammed heavy into his side, knocking him down, and black swarmed the edge of his vision. He felt that something in his blood quicken, the beast coming awake.

_Not now_ , he thought, at the same time wondering if the beast wasn't exactly what he needed now. He was nearly out of ammunition, he had no materia, and just one of these monsters already had him reeling. The beast was more a match for them, and against Jenova... Sephiroth would need help.

But he couldn't control it. He didn't know what it would do, whether it would attack Cloud, or the villagers, or Sephiroth...

_Not now_ , Vincent thought again, and rolled out of the way of the next attack. He dodged the next few blows and found an opening to strike his claws deep into the monster's side. As he pulled free, the monster lunged forward, jaws opening, but someone's foot connected with its head and it stumbled back.

"Thought you could use a hand," said Zangan, dropping into a stance beside him. Tifa had joined them, too, fighting beside Cloud.

Vincent risked a glance behind him. The truck was long gone, and he could see no one else.

"They're all away safe, I hope," Zangan added. "But we've got work to do."

He put his hands up to catch the monster's arm as it swung for them, and Vincent nodded, moving in to take advantage. Together, they managed to bring the creature down.

Cloud and Tifa were holding their own, and when Vincent and Zangan moved in to help, they made quick work of the second monster.

"There were more of them than that," said Tifa, and they all looked in the direction of the square.

Whether the rest had turned on Sephiroth, or he had cut them down before they could, they were nothing but corpses now. Vincent had seen Sephiroth in action against the weaker monsters of the Nibel mountains, but this was further proof of his prowess: one man taking down more enemies than the four of them combined, and more quickly, too.

But the wall of fire had come down, and now he fought with Jenova herself. He was agile enough to evade her grasping tentacles, but Vincent could see she had him on the defensive, struggling to shield himself from her magic.

"You brought that woman back with you from the reactor," said Zangan. "Another one of Shinra's experiments?"

"Worse," said Vincent. "The source of them."

They all stood in silence for a moment, tensed as if to move but no one moving. They all understood the difference in skill; if Sephiroth was outmatched, they'd be nothing but cannon fodder.

"We need Zack," said Cloud.

Vincent shook his head. "He'll be in no condition to fight, and it's hours to the reactor."

"Well, then he needs our help," Cloud persisted. "I'm going."

"I'll go with you," said Zangan, but Tifa exclaimed suddenly as she turned her attention to him.

"You're bleeding!"

Zangan drew his cape aside, revealing more of the blood soaking through his shirt. Vincent hadn't seen him take a hit; it must have been from his earlier skirmish.

"It's not so bad," he said.

"Mt. Nibel's a hard climb," said Tifa. "You can't go like that. You... you should go after the others. Look after Papa for me. Okay?"

Zangan hesitated, but he nodded gruffly.

"What about you?" asked Cloud.

"Me? I'm going with you." When he opened his mouth to protest, Tifa went on, "Really? You're going to argue with me after I just saved your lying butt?"

"Wha..."

"Honestly, you couldn't even be bothered to say hello until there was a crisis."

Cloud scratched his head. "Sorry."

"Well, come on. Zack needs our help."

The two of them hurried off and ducked behind the inn, taking the back way to avoid the square. Zangan stood with Vincent, watching the fight. A blast knocked Sephiroth into the water tower hard enough to crack the wood, but he rolled aside before Jenova's tentacle slammed down after him. The Masamune flashed, severing it only partially.

"This may be a fight he has to take on alone," said Zangan. "Whatever that thing is... you're no match for it."

Vincent's hands clenched at his sides, and he felt only one of them. "He is my son. I cannot do nothing. Not again."

"You'll get yourself killed."

Vincent took a slow breath and let it out. A steady buzz ran through his veins; the beast was alert, but not riled enough to emerge. What if he invited it? Would he have any more control than before? Or would it instead consume him completely?

"That isn't what I'm afraid of," he said. He glanced at Zangan. "You should get going if you want to catch up to the others. Make sure you get that looked at."

"I get the feeling you're about to do something crazy." Zangan offered his hand. "Good luck."

Vincent took it, the contact a welcome jolt to push him towards action. "Thank you," he said. Never mind past failures or uncertainties. His son needed his help, so whatever he had to give, he would give it.

Zangan turned to go, and Vincent turned for the fight.

He had a few shots left, so he ducked behind the water tower and unholstered his gun. Jenova was a relatively stationary target, relying on her magic to hold Sephiroth at a distance. Vincent took aim for her head and fired.

Her head snapped back and her tentacles writhed, but then she simply twisted, her glowing eyes falling on him. He got off another shot, and then a wave of force hit him, knocking him to the ground. Something wrapped around his ankle, pulled, and then went slack.

Sephiroth hauled him to his feet and behind the water tower as a concentrated stream of fire shot their way.

"I appreciate the gesture," Sephiroth hissed, "but she'll kill you. Get out of here."

"I can't leave you to do this alone," Vincent said.

Sephiroth threw up some sort of barrier spell and met his gaze. He opened his mouth to say something, paused, and then said, "Then let it out."

"What?"

"You're too weak as a human and you know it."

Vincent shook his head. "I might not recognize you as my ally. And..."

"You will. And you'll come back from it. You brought me back; I'll return the favor."

His dead certainty caught Vincent off-guard. The man was in his element here, in the midst of battle, giving commands. He knew himself like this, he understood this. If Sephiroth was confident that the beast would be a help to him...

"All right," he said. "But I may need the danger to bring it out. Don't protect me."

Sephiroth nodded, and Vincent risked a glance around the side of the water tower. Jenova was drawing one of the monster's corpses into herself, a grotesque scene that Vincent didn't know whether to quantify as eating.

"She's reabsorbing the pieces of herself," said Sephiroth, without needing to look.

"Are you still...?"

"Connected?" Sephiroth finished, and his grimace made the answer obvious. "Her words mean nothing to me now."

Vincent wasn't certain if that was true so much as Sephiroth needed it to be. It couldn't be easy fighting her with her voice in his head. He hesitated, then laid his hand on Sephiroth's back, wanting to convey something, wanting to give him words that _did_ mean something.

"I'm proud of you," he said.

Vincent had seen this look on Sephiroth's face before, a quiet astonishment that said even the affection Vincent could manage to show him was more than he'd known. It was heartbreaking, and as before he swiftly brushed it off.

"Let's just get on with this," Sephiroth said. "The rest can wait."

Vincent left the cover of the water tower and fired his last bullet into Jenova's neck. Her tentacle whipped out and grabbed him around the waist, binding his arms to his sides. She lifted him into the air, and the tentacle coiled tighter. The skin of his bare arm began to burn dully, as though her flesh itself was poison, and the beast clamored in his veins.

Instead of fighting to suppress it, Vincent shut his eyes and faced it. _Help me_ , he thought. _Here is a worthy opponent for you. Fight her with me, with my son._

The shift wasn't so raw as before, though it was still more painful than anything else he'd ever experienced. It happened quickly this time, the changes ripping through his body in moments, tearing him free from Jenova's grasp.

The beast lunged for her immediately. His claws rent into her flesh, and he ignored how the ichor inside of her seemed to burn him. The owner of this body had given him free rein to tear her to pieces, and he meant to.

  


* * *

  


_Do you really think that will be enough?_ Jenova asked him, speaking to him in his own voice. Sephiroth wondered if she always had, without him ever realizing. Which thoughts had been his own, and which had she fed to him? How had he come to look at Zack and thought nothing but _traitor_? How had he looked at simple villagers and seen a threat?

_You always knew they weren't on your side._

Wherever the thought came from, Sephiroth shoved it aside. He had a fight to win.

Jenova had put a halt to Vincent's initial onslaught with a water spell, and he stumbled back, choking for air. Sephiroth called down a bolt spell to disrupt her magic, and in the half-second that it stunned her, he risked darting in with the Masamune.

Her tentacles lashed at him, keeping him from reaching her body. Her skin was tough, making them hard to sever, and when he didn't, the cuts he made would close up again in short order.

_A fight without end._

Vincent's monster was undeterred. The instant he recovered he leapt back into the fray, tearing at anything he could get his claws or teeth on. He tore apart the end of one tentacle, snarled, and kept on. Sephiroth wondered how much of Vincent was still in there. The unbridled ferocity was unlike him, but the determination...

It was an ally, at any rate, and one he quickly realized had no sense of strategy. The beast lived to be in the fray, but as wild as he was, Sephiroth could at least rely on his unceasing offensive to draw Jenova's attention from him.

There were breaks now in her barrage of magic against him, and he could pull together more and more powerful spells with which to strike back at her. Everything he'd learned from materia, but also, everything she used against him became a tool at his disposal. Something he could mimic. It had taken him an entire day to learn to tap into this magic, but now the floodgates were open.

Then, in the middle of the fight, she vanished--gone from one place to reappear behind him--or was that only how she'd wanted it to appear to them? A tentacle bored through his middle, lifted him, and flung him across the square. His back struck a lamppost and he fell to lie crumpled at its base. He could feel his blood warm beneath him.

Vincent's beast leapt into the space between them, and summoned a wall of fire. Protecting him? The beast glanced back at him, and Sephiroth nodded in acknowledgment.

Somehow Sephiroth could feel his flesh already beginning to knit itself together, abnormally fast but not as fast as magic. He thumbed the hilt of the Masamune, instinctively feeling for his Restore materia, but found it empty. A moment of thoughtlessness. Foolish. He reached instead for the well of magic within him, and healed himself.

How deep was that reservoir? It felt limitless, but he had never tested it, never realized it existed. In the midst of battle, he didn't like not knowing.

_If you had stayed with me, you would know._

_Would I? We are of a kind, but I am also something different._

_Diluted. Weak._

_Hybrid. You don't know my limits, and that scares you, too._

Twilight had passed into night, and with it the balance shifted. Bit by bit, they tore pieces from her, and they didn't allow her to reclaim them. When she tried to fool them with her illusions, Sephiroth realized he could always sense where she really was, and they lost their power over him.

The mansion loomed dark beyond her, out of reach of the lamplight. The thoughts of vengeance he'd first had in that basement--had they been his own? Or hers? Had she been calling to him even then?

That was where she belonged, he thought, with the relics of the others who had walked those rooms and planned his _creation_ , not his birth. To them, and to her, he'd been nothing but a tool. All of them had seen him only for what he could do.

Well, he would show them.

He and Vincent forced Jenova back against the gate into the yard, but she knew his mind, and she rallied her strength there. A spell burst upon them that Sephiroth couldn't name--a blinding green light and the absence of sound, followed by a horrific tearing in his whole body. Physically, it made no wounds, but it left him stunned, disoriented, struggling for the focus that magic required.

Jenova grabbed him, lifted him high above her as though she meant to drop him into a nonexistent mouth and swallow him whole.

_You are a part of me. A stolen piece that I will have back again, bit by bit if I must._

Another tentacle gripped his leg and pulled. He swung the Masamune, but couldn't slash deeply enough.

Vincent's monster leapt for her head, his hind claws burrowing into her chest for purchase while his foreclaws raked across her eyes. She shrieked in Sephiroth's mind, and her grip loosened enough for him to break free. He landed on his feet, barely, and as he found his balance, he pushed out a wave of force to throw her through the gate into the yard.

As if he sensed what was coming, Vincent's monster leapt clear.

Sephiroth drew on the reservoir within him and recalled a spell Jenova had tried to use on him; a blazing flare burst around her, but he didn't let it die. He kept drawing on that well of magic, feeding the flames. He fed them with his fury--her manipulation, her betrayal, and worst of all, the thing she had nearly made of him. Unthinking, unquestioning, a conduit for her wrath.

Vincent's monster joined in with his own magic, revelling in it, and soon nothing could be seen of Jenova but the flames that engulfed her. An unearthly shriek rose up from within, a sound from someone who had no voice of her own. The stench was terrible, but Sephiroth took a perverse pleasure in it, in the destruction of her rotten flesh. He kept on feeding the flames.

The blaze grew large enough that it caught the roof of the mansion beyond. Before long, it, too, went up in flames, a brilliant display against the night. The smoke blotted out the stars overhead. A fire to consume everything.

Jenova's screams died out abruptly, and in the silence--

With the silence came black.


	10. Chapter 10

Sephiroth woke to an unfamiliar ceiling. He let himself stare at it, his body unwilling to move.

He felt... hollow. More than hollow. Like he'd been gutted. Something essential to his being had been torn out of him. He realized he was straining to hear something in the back of his mind, and finding... nothing.

Her voice was gone.

Had she become so much a part of him in only a few days? Worming her way into his mind, until he could scarcely distinguish his own thoughts. Everything she had said had made sense to him, had seemed right to him, but now...

"You're awake," someone said.

Sephiroth made his head turn. Cloud moved into his field of vision, standing from a chair he'd been sitting in nearby.

"Where is this?" Sephiroth asked.

"My house," said Cloud. "It was easier dragging you in here than up the stairs at the inn. You're... heavy."

That Cloud had bothered surprised him, after what he had done. Sephiroth closed his eyes, trying to muster the energy for a thanks that didn't sound insincere.

They snapped open again. "Vincent?"

Cloud nodded somewhere out of sight. "He's still out of it, but he seems okay." A pause. "Zack's gonna be all right, too. If you were wondering."

His tone was cold, as it should have been. Sephiroth knew what he had done. For all that Jenova had twisted his thoughts, his actions were no blessed haze now that she was gone from them. He could remember each wound he had inflicted, the feeling of the Masamune cutting into his friend's flesh, the impact of his boot against Zack's chest.

Sephiroth imagined now, how long Zack must have lain there before help arrived. How close he had come to death, and the thoughts that had nearly been his last. Reflecting on the so-called friend who had attacked him, and the innocent people he'd been unable to protect from impending murder.

"He must hate me," he murmured.

"He's not a fan right now," Cloud confirmed wryly. "Neither am I."

"Then why are you here?"

"To keep an eye on you. And for Vincent."

Sephiroth struggled to push himself up, and managed to bring a little more of the room into view. Vincent lay in another bed nearby, disheveled but breathing evenly. The chair was positioned at _his_ bedside, not Sephiroth's.

"Where is Zack?" he wondered.

"He's at Tifa's," said Cloud. "But you're not going there."

Sephiroth lay back against the pillow. "No," he agreed, and not only because he doubted his ability even to stand at the moment. "I... have nothing I could say."

He could feel Cloud's eyes on him. "I don't get you," he said. "Before all this... I really respected you. I thought you were a hero, that you had it all together. I wanted to be like you."

It had always been laughable, Sephiroth thought, that anyone should look up to him. There was nothing to admire in a man whose only talent was death, who didn't know himself, who had nothing in his life but the work he was assigned. How thoroughly Cloud had been disillusioned now; gone was the deference with which he'd addressed Sephiroth in the past, when he had cared what Sephiroth thought of him.

"Well, I'm no hero," said Sephiroth. "Quite the opposite... it may be my nature to be a destroyer."

"You say that like it's not a choice."

Sephiroth glanced at him. "You're right," he acknowledged. "I made plenty of my own choices to become this person. It's no one to emulate."

A long pause before Cloud asked quietly, "Do I need to worry... about what you're going to choose now?"

Was the village safe from him? Would they all be better off if Cloud took advantage of his weakened state and killed him now?

Maybe so. It was because he hadn't known himself that it had been so easy for Jenova to influence him. Without the false certainty she had given him, what sort of man was he, really? He had thought himself even-tempered, before Nibelheim, but there was a deep well of rage within him that he'd been suppressing. Could he control it? Would he choose to?

"I don't intend any more harm," he said, "but I wouldn't call my intent reliable."

"...I think maybe you'd better just leave," said Cloud, "once Vincent wakes up."

"I can do that."

"You know... If my dad showed up all of a sudden, and he was anything like Vincent..."

"I know," said Sephiroth. He was a good father, wasn't he? The kind of family he'd wanted all this time. If that was all he had now, then... maybe it could serve as the anchor that he sorely needed. Maybe, it was more than enough to hold onto.

Sephiroth slept again for a time, and when he woke, his body obeyed him, albeit sluggishly. His boots found the floor, and he stood.

Cloud had gone. A break in his vigil, Sephiroth supposed. Who knew how long he'd sat awake.

In the other bed, Vincent slumbered on. His father... A father who had refused to fight against him, even when it would have been the right and moral thing to do. A father who was proud of him, against all logic.

Sephiroth didn't understand him. But... he wanted to. What Vincent offered him was more painful to accept than what Jenova had placed before him, but maybe that was because it was real. There was a depth to it that she had never really been able to imitate.

Sephiroth would let him sleep. There was something he needed to see.

Outside, a drab grey light diffused through an overcast sky. The air was the cool of early autumn, but it smelled of ash and left an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

The square was deserted, but it bore the signs of last night's battle. The wood of the water tower was splintered and blackened, and patches of the ground were dark with old blood. Several windows were broken, a lamp post dented, and the sign outside the inn had been knocked loose.

He recalled the crowd of villagers he had gathered there last night, and imagined what that pile of bodies might have looked like in the daylight. After Wutai, it wasn't hard to picture.

Turning, he walked up the street to the mansion gate. The hinges squealed faintly as he pushed it open.

In the center of the yard lay a pile of ashes and charred remains, completely unrecognizable. He had burned her nearly to nothing, and still he wasn't certain whether it had required him to drain his last reserves of magic.

Sephiroth nudged the pile with his boot, and watched as some fragment of charred flesh crumbled away. Was she really gone? Was this all that remained of her? The void inside of him said that it was, but he wondered. Maybe, with her illusions, some part of her had escaped. Maybe it was only their connection that he had destroyed here last night. Because to think otherwise...

It unsettled him. She was an ancient monster who had brought the Cetra nearly to extinction, and he, blind to his own strength, had reduced her to this, with only the help of some feral beast. What was he? What had Gast unwittingly brought into this world?

He lifted his gaze to the mansion beyond. Fire had ruined it, but hadn't destroyed it completely. The roof had collapsed, and two stories of rubble lay blackened within, but the stone foundations remained, including the walls encasing the secret stair. That damn basement probably lay untouched.

"You really hated that mansion, huh?"

Sephiroth froze at the sound of Zack's voice. He hadn't expected to see him so soon. Cautiously, he turned.

Zack stood at the gate, leaning on it almost casually. He didn't look injured, but he had changed out of his uniform and into borrowed clothes, a loose long-sleeved shirt that would have hidden any bandages. His eyes were tired, and his expression uncharacteristically reserved.

"...should you be out of bed?" Sephiroth asked him.

Zack shrugged. "I'm not doing so bad."

"I nearly killed you."

"Forgot you gave me your Restore materia, didn't you?"

"...I did," Sephiroth admitted, and the reminder was some tiny relief. He hadn't left Zack to bleed out on the floor of the reactor; he'd been able to heal himself.

Zack pushed open the gate and approached the pile of ash, stopping beside Sephiroth. "So, this is what's left of her?"

"Yes."

"Good riddance."

Sephiroth couldn't argue with that, but he wasn't sure what to say. "...Cloud told you what happened?"

"Yeah. He told me how Vincent talked you down." A pause. "I was ready to be pissed at you. But when we made it back here... Man, I thought you were dead. The mansion was on fire, and you were out cold. Kinda... took it outta me."

Sephiroth looked at him, stunned. He'd been worried? After everything, he'd been worried.

"You're well within your rights to be angry with me," he said.

But Zack said nothing. He'd always had something to say, in the past. The challenge had been getting him to shut up. Sephiroth wondered what was going through his mind now, the things he no longer wanted to share.

The Masamune lay on the ground not far from them, where Sephiroth must have fallen at the battle's end. Cloud had left it there, and now with Zack beside him, Sephiroth wanted nothing less than to take it up again.

Things would never be the same between them. Jenova had made sure of that.

...Jenova? Really?

"I want to blame her," Sephiroth went on quietly, "but _I_ let her in. I wanted to listen. I wanted to feel special, instead of... It was the same with Shinra. I could have chosen not to fight their war, but I liked that I was good at it. I've... been weak, that way."

Zack didn't look at him, but he did speak. "You need to get your shit together," he said. "What happened to you... sucks, but you don't get to take it out on whoever's convenient."

It was true, the people who deserved it weren't here, and instead Zack had taken the brunt of his erratic behavior. Sephiroth had finally accepted his friendship only to turn on him for a minor mistake he hadn't even made. And now, he was trying to talk to him without really acknowledging it. As though Zack didn't deserve to have it acknowledged.

Sephiroth clenched his hands and forced himself to look Zack in the eye. "I'm sorry," he said. "You were trying to help me, to warn me, and I... betrayed you. Of everything I did yesterday... there is nothing I regret more. I should have trusted you."

Zack returned his gaze, one corner of his mouth twisted up in a wry sort of half-smile. "You know," he said, "it's almost flattering, to be that important to you. But, scary, too. She split us up, and just like that you were ready to kill everyone."

"You're the only good person I know. If I couldn't believe in you, I could believe in no one."

Zack shook his head, looking away. "That's a lot of pressure."

"What?"

"Look, I mess up sometimes. I say the wrong thing, I do stupid shit. Are you gonna freak out every time?"

"I don't understand," said Sephiroth. "Aren't we finished?"

"Finished?"

"I tried to kill you. If that doesn't end a friendship, I don't know what does."

"You mean you're giving up on it," Zack stated.

"I... thought that was what you would want."

Zack shook his head slowly. "I don't know, man. I thought I lost my friend back there in that reactor... but here you are again. The thing is, I don't know how long this version of you is sticking around, you know?"

"Then, allow me to make amends," said Sephiroth, hopeful. "Allow me to regain your trust."

"I don't really know what would be enough, Seph."

Sephiroth had expected to be told what to do, again. He had expected Zack to tell him how to fix this, when _he_ was the one who had ruined it. He had to do better.

What could he possibly offer? What did Zack need?

"Do you still intend to go back to Midgar, for your friends?"

Zack blinked. "Hell... I haven't been thinking about it. I guess... Yeah. They oughtta know the truth about Shinra."

"I might be of some help," Sephiroth ventured, "if you want to persuade them to leave the company."

Zack looked at him, considering. "...I'll think about it," he decided. "You're headed back to Midgar anyway, right? Or've you changed your mind?"

Sephiroth did have reasons of his own to return. There was the information he'd asked Tseng to collect for him. An investigation to conduct, into who had allowed him on this mission knowing full well what he might find in Nibelheim. And, what he thought Zack was referring to, his vengeance on Hojo.

"No," Sephiroth said, "but I think... confronting Hojo now would be a poor choice. As you said, I haven't been in control of myself, and that's a level of rage that I don't think I could pull back from."

"I guess that's a start," said Zack. "Being able to recognize that."

"A start..." Sephiroth gave a helpless shrug. "I suppose, instead, I could search for whatever it was that Gast found, and learn what I really am... But I think I understand it well enough. I am a monster after all."

"No, you're not," said Zack, with certainty. "I don't think monsters apologize."

Sephiroth wanted, in the moment, to say something, but he found himself unable to form the words. Zack was a better friend than he deserved, and even if that friendship came to an end, he was lucky to have had it. Why couldn't he say that aloud?

Zack's stomach growled loudly into the pause.

"You haven't eaten," Sephiroth observed.

"Tifa said I could help myself to her pantry, but..." Zack scratched his head.

"She isn't here to cook for you."

"You make me sound helpless."

"In that respect, you are," Sephiroth pointed out. He turned from the mansion, and the pile of ash. "I'll do it."

Zack turned with him. "You cook?"

"I do live alone."

"This, I've gotta see," said Zack, and the ease of their banter made that hollow in Sephiroth's chest a little smaller. This hadn't been torn from him, too. Not completely, not yet.

They left the yard and crossed the square to Tifa's house, walking slowly, both of them showing their exhaustion. As Sephiroth pushed the door open, he glanced back at Zack.

"When exactly did she grant you access to her kitchen anyway?"

"Sometime while I was asleep I guess?" Zack offered. "She left this morning to track down the rest of the villagers, but Cloud told me."

"She wasn't with them?"

Zack blinked. "Oh. No, she stayed behind to help Cloud. Thought you knew."

"No... I was preoccupied." Until he'd woken to Cloud's voice, Sephiroth had thought that everyone had fled but Vincent. Cloud staying hadn't surprised him, but...

"I was halfway down the mountain when she and Cloud caught up to me," Zack went on. "Helped get my ass the rest of the way. She's shaping up to be a pretty good fighter herself, actually."

"Hm." Sephiroth stepped into the kitchen and took a moment to survey the stove, the spice rack, the hanging cookware. He did cook, but he cooked simply and out of necessity; this was the kitchen of someone who enjoyed it.

He'd never given Tifa much consideration, but there was little fault to be found in her conduct. Even after learning he wasn't human, her concern had been for his feelings. At the time, he hadn't been able to notice.

Now, it was probably for the best if she never knew he'd been in her house.

"I suppose this town may need people like her, in the future," he said.

"You don't think Shinra's going to come after them, do you?" Zack wondered.

"We can falsify our reports, but eventually Hojo's going to send someone to check on that experiment he was running. What happens then, I don't know."

"Well, I'm pretty sure Cloud's staying, so hopefully he'll keep 'em alert for any Shinra fuckery."

Sephiroth nodded. "I hope so. This village has seen enough of it."

They went on talking sporadically while Sephiroth cooked, the words inconsequential but meaning everything. Sephiroth had taken these casual exchanges for granted. Now he relished the promise of a way back, that Zack might forgive him in time. He wanted to be _this_ person, the version of himself whom Zack called friend.

He didn't stay to eat with Zack, but took an extra plate back to Cloud's house and took up a seat at Vincent's bedside. His father's bedside.

He wondered if he ought to use the title now. Would it feel strange? Sephiroth had no doubt that Vincent would prefer it; he'd thought of Sephiroth as his son from the beginning, needing no proof at all, and to him, it truly would be a name with meaning in it. And that was why using it would represent a level of affection that Sephiroth... had never been comfortable with.

But after all Vincent had done for him, hadn't he earned that effort?

Sephiroth folded his arms, watching the slumbering man.

...he _had_ really come out of it, hadn't he? Sephiroth had lost consciousness while the beast still reigned, so he hadn't been able to make good on his promise. Vincent's body was human now, but...

Time passed. The overcast sky opened up into a steady rain, and the dim outside made the hour seem later than it was.

At last Vincent stirred, and Sephiroth leaned forward, waiting for his eyes to open.

"Are you yourself?" he asked.

Vincent's red eyes fell on him, and he blinked slowly. "Yes," he said. "I am myself."

Relief washed over him, and Sephiroth sat back. He hadn't lost this either. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"...hungry," Vincent confessed. "But that's unimportant--"

"I made food," Sephiroth said, standing to retrieve it.

Vincent pushed himself up, and he accepted the plate, though its existence seemed to baffle him. "Thank you," he managed.

Sephiroth sat again. "I interrupted you. Go on."

Vincent looked back up at him, searching his gaze. "I wanted to know how you are. The moment Jenova died... it was like it hurt you."

"I... felt her go," Sephiroth admitted, looking away. It was a moment he hadn't wanted to dwell on. The shock of finality, an _end_ , and not just any end but _hers_. He'd almost let her mean everything to him, and in that moment there'd been _nothing_ \-- "My mind is clear now. I'm all right."

"...all right," said Vincent, but he sounded skeptical.

Sephiroth didn't want him to think that it was denial. "I need more time to understand what happened to me. We'll talk, when I do. Now... I want to talk about what I _do_ understand. Last night, what I was about to do..." He looked back at Vincent. "That would have been a monster there is no coming back from. And you stopped me."

Vincent shook his head. "I'm only glad I didn't fail you again."

"No one has ever fought for me like you did," Sephiroth insisted. "It isn't just that you're my father... you _want_ to be my father. At first I thought it was only because of my mother--because of Lucrecia. But that isn't it, is it?"

"No. When I said you wanted family... I may have been speaking of myself, too."

Something they both wanted... A realization hit him, suddenly. "Do I have any more? I... never thought of it, but most people have grandparents, aunts, uncles..."

"I was estranged, from my family," Vincent admitted. "And Lucrecia's... I never met them. But we could look for them, if you like. I had a sister... Who knows? Perhaps you have cousins."

"Cousins..." Sephiroth shook his head, marvelling at the thought. "It sounds so... human."

"It _is_ human. That is what you come from."

It was what he came from, but he'd made a fine mess of it. He wondered what the villagers thought of him now. How much had they processed of last night's events? He'd come commanding monsters to drag them from their homes into the street, he'd threatened their destruction, and then in the last moment he'd made a path for them to run.

Even if they'd heard every word exchanged, what could they make of it? Days and days and it was still hard enough for _him_ to understand. They could be certain only that he'd deceived them, and that he couldn't be relied upon to defend them. It would make sense to fear him. It would make sense to reject him. And maybe it was something people had always sensed about him, instinctively.

"...I wonder if I can really be a part of them," he said.

"Even humans often feel like outsiders, Sephiroth," Vincent said gently. "It's a matter of finding the right people."

"Zack is still speaking to me," Sephiroth conceded. "So I suppose that's something."

"Then he's all right."

"Yes. Yes, he's all right."

"I'm glad."

The way he said that, again--certainly he was glad that Zack was all right for his own sake, but more so he was glad that Sephiroth hadn't lost his only friend. Somehow Sephiroth and what was best for him were always at the forefront of his mind. It wasn't new, but he'd had trouble believing it before.

A father completely unlike Hojo.

"Before we do any more searching, I want to make amends, if I can. That means returning to Midgar. Would you..." Sephiroth hesitated, turning the word over in his mind again one last time before he let himself say it. "Would you accompany me, Father?"

Vincent had at last begun to pick at his food, and he froze with the fork raised halfway to his mouth, staring. Then, for the first time, Sephiroth saw him smile--slight, but there.

"Of course, Sephiroth," he said.

It hadn't been so strange after all, Sephiroth thought, relaxing into his chair. He let Vincent eat, and allowed his mind to wander. They _were_ connected, but there was still so much that they didn't know about each other. For his part, Sephiroth hadn't really asked; he'd only wanted to know the circumstances surrounding his creation. But now...

The mundane things he'd wondered about, walking the halls of the mansion, came back to him. About their day-to-day lives, outside of the experiment.

"Do you cook?" he wondered at length.

"A little," Vincent answered, blinking. "Nothing elaborate."

"And... Lucrecia? Did she?"

"Not often. It was always a big affair when she did. She was good at it."

Sephiroth hesitated. For a time, he'd put her out of his mind, rejected her, like Vincent, as meaning anything to him.

"Maybe," he ventured, "you could tell me about my real mother. Not about her involvement with the Project, but... What was she like? Tell me everything."

The look on Vincent's face made him think maybe he shouldn't have asked. There was a pain, a longing there, but then it settled into something different. Vincent's claw clicked against the empty plate as he set it on the nightstand beside him.

"I first met Lucrecia at Headquarters," he said quietly, "before we left for Nibelheim. She was warm, even knowing I was a Turk. She welcomed me as a member of the team. And she was... the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I must have spent half the trip here training myself not to stare."

"Was she... already married then?"

"Yes. They had been for several years. I couldn't understand it--the way he was so brusque and patronizing with her. She told me later that... he was so different from when they first met. He used to dote on her, encourage her in her studies. She always thought that he at least respected her intellect, but I think... he wanted to possess it, somehow, for himself."

"That sounds more like him," Sephiroth reflected coldly.

"She didn't want anyone to know there were problems," Vincent went on. "She would cover for him in public, convince people he had bad manners because his mind was always on his work. She made him bearable. But... the Project put a lot of pressure on her. She couldn't do the work, and keep that up. I caught her crying, once, and that was the first time we talked alone. I could say we became friends first, but... there was an attraction between us from the start. It was only because of her marriage that we didn't act on it."

"But you did."

"Eventually, yes. We used to take walks together into the countryside. One day, she tripped, and I caught her, and she..." Vincent trailed off. His distant gaze dropped into his lap. "Perhaps you'd prefer not to hear those details," he said, though Sephiroth thought it was as much for his own privacy. It was a treasured memory, and he wanted to keep it that way. "After that, we took every opportunity to be together. I thought we were in love."

"Weren't you?" Sephiroth asked, noting a difference in the way he spoke of it now, compared to only a few days ago.

Vincent shook his head. "Looking back now... Perhaps she was only using me, in her own way, to escape a bad marriage. But I was happy to be used, and I know she cared for me in some way." A pause. "She ended things shortly after she found out she was pregnant. When I learned about the experiment, I protested, but... Hojo told me it was none of my business, and she took his side."

"...she sounds selfish, my mother," said Sephiroth. Nothing Vincent had said had changed that impression.

Vincent was quiet for a moment, frowning. "I think in some ways, she had to be," he said, "or Hojo would have stifled everything she was. She had to fight for recognition of her work, even with Gast, and she had to fight for her own happiness. I don't blame her."

"Was she kind to you, at least?"

"Yes. It wasn't something I was used to, as a Turk. She would ask me about myself. My life, my thoughts... And when I had nothing to say, she would tell me about her work. I didn't understand the finer points, but she was so passionate about it, and I loved listening to the sound of her voice..."

It was obvious, listening to _him_ speak, that Vincent had been in love. It was a love he still mourned, after her rejection, after her betrayal, after... a probable death, but not a certain one.

But would it be a good thing for Vincent to see her again, if he was able? Would it help him to come to terms with what had happened? Or might it encourage something toxic, with a woman who may have used him?

Sephiroth decided he wasn't the best judge of that. Vincent had always been honest with him. He would be honest, too.

"A few days ago," he said, "I had one of the Turks do some checking into the two of you. It may only be Hojo covering things up, but her file doesn't say that she died. It says she resigned, months after your alleged death. We could look for her."

Vincent stared at him. "She might be alive..."

"Maybe," Sephiroth reiterated. "I'm not sure how I feel about meeting her... but we can cross that bridge if and when we come to it."

"You want to do it for me," Vincent realized.

"You miss her. That's plain."

"Yes, but... if you don't want--"

"I don't need a father who never thinks of himself. I'm not a child. I ought to be able to give something back."

"All right," said Vincent.

He'd spoken sharply. Sephiroth made an effort to adjust his tone. "Besides, if she is alive, then she may have changed since then. If I am trying to be better, maybe she's tried, too."

Vincent's expression was difficult to read. He lifted his hand as if to reach for something, but simply settled it across his claw instead. "It took a great strength of will," he said, "to turn from the path you found yourself on. It's... easy to make a decision, and follow it through to its end, even if its course becomes something unwelcome. We don't like to question ourselves."

Did he speak of himself, and the decision he'd made, not to interfere with Lucrecia?

He found himself staring at Vincent's hands, and drew his gaze back to his own. He'd taken his gloves off to cook, and now, he reached out and laid a hand atop Vincent's, briefly, the gesture he thought Vincent had abandoned. However much of the blame rested with Vincent... it didn't matter now.

They were both trying, weren't they?

"I think we understand each other there," Sephiroth said. "But maybe it will be a little easier, together."

Vincent nodded. "I look forward to visiting Midgar," he said. "I'd like to see where you live, where you spend your time..."

"It won't be much of a tour. I spend most of my time at Headquarters."

"Then I'll have to see it."

Sephiroth looked Vincent over skeptically. The unkempt hair, the claw, that cape... "If you're going there, we'll need to make you less conspicuous."

Vincent nodded back at him. "You'll need a change of clothes yourself."

Sephiroth looked down at himself, noticing for the first time since waking. His pauldrons were singed and scored, and his coat torn and burned, reduced to a ragged mess at its edges, a testament to how closely Jenova's magic had followed him. It had been with him through most of the war, but now its time had at last come to an end.

Perhaps that was fitting. It was the mark of a man who had followed orders, to the glory of others, and he wanted to leave that man behind. Where he went from here would not be anyone's choice but his own.

"Yes," he agreed. "I think it's time for a change."


	11. Epilogue

Sephiroth didn't know the road Zack took from the Sector 5 station. He was more familiar than most plate-dwellers with the Midgar undercity, but he hardly knew all of it, and it quickly became apparent that no one lived in the mess of scrap they passed now. For whatever reason, these buildings had been abandoned, left to rust and fall apart.

Zack had promised privacy, and Sephiroth was grateful for it. Even out of uniform, he couldn't help but stand out. It was his hair; he'd cut it shorter, after Nibelheim, but it was still silver. Zack had had to dissuade him from cutting all of it off in a fury over how Jenova had used even that supposed similarity to forge a connection with him. He still had moments like that, remembering the tricks she'd played on his mind.

Ahead, the spires of some more prominent building appeared above the trash, and Zack glanced back at him, looking nervous.

"Did we really have to complicate this by bringing Vincent along?" he asked, though he had to know the answer. Vincent had actually offered to stay behind, but Sephiroth rarely went anywhere without him; he didn't trust himself yet.

"I thought you liked Vincent," said Sephiroth, instead of voicing the obvious.

"Yeah, but... 'Hey, I'd like to introduce you to my friend and his dad, who look the same age.' It's weird."

"I can't make it not weird."

Vincent spoke up from behind them. "You needn't mention our relationship at the start."

"Yeah, but as soon as he calls you 'Dad,' the cat's gonna be outta the bag."

"I don't call him 'Dad.'"

"'Father,' whatever. Have you thought about not being so stiff about it?"

"Pardon me if I'm still getting used to _having_ a father," said Sephiroth. "Did you write that letter to your parents yet?"

"Uh," Zack faltered, but lucky for him they'd reached their destination. "Anyway, this is it."

Before them rose a tall stone building with stained-glass windows. On the plate, it might not have been so remarkable, but here it was massive, a solid and steady presence.

"So since not being weird is out, can you at least try to be... polite?" Zack suggested.

"We'll try," Sephiroth told him dryly.

Zack pushed open the doors and led the way inside.

It became more apparent from its interior that the church had weathered its share of storms. Several of the stone pillars had broken, most of the pews stood in disarray, and whether from these stresses or some other intent, here and there the floor boards had pried loose and scattered.

But at the far end, in the false daylight that shone in through the high windows, a bed of flowers bloomed, and Sephiroth understood that something was not quite right here.

A girl in a pale blue dress crouched among the flowers, but she stood at the sound of the door and turned towards them.

"Zack!" she said, greeting his approach with a smile. She put her arms around his neck. "You're _early_."

Zack grinned stupidly in her presence, and for a moment he drew her close. He kissed her cheek. "Hope that's okay," he said. "These two are super into punctuality."

Sephiroth tried not to stare. He could see why Zack had been unsettled; the resemblance between her and the woman from his memories was so strong that a lack of connection was impossible. She was the right age to be that woman's child, even if she had another mother now. It happened.

And there was something else about her... Something that put him on edge, and he didn't think it was her resemblance to the disguise Jenova had chosen. Unassuming as she appeared, there was a power inside of her.

"Aren't you going to introduce me?" she asked, pulling away from Zack.

"Sure, sure," said Zack. "Aeris, this is Sephiroth, and my friend Vincent. Guys, this is my girlfriend, Aeris."

"I've heard a lot about you from Zack," said Sephiroth, and he extended his hand. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"You, too," Aeris said, and, not the least bit intimidated, she took his hand.

_Oh_ , he thought, at the contact. This was what it really looked like, the thing he had thought himself to be. He wondered if Jenova had known the form she'd taken, if it had been a private joke shared with no one but herself.

Because here he stood, in his veins the blood of the monster that had killed Aeris's people, and he wondered if _she_ knew. There was something knowing about her expression, but maybe he imagined it.

"You look a little different from your picture, though," she added, tilting her head.

Sephiroth ran a hand over his hair, tied back in a short ponytail, and before he could come up with a reply, Zack elbowed him in the ribs.

"The idiot was _this_ close to shaving it all off," he said. "Can you imagine?"

Aeris screwed up her face. "I really can't!" she declared, and then her attention shifted. "And you're Vincent?" She shook his hand, too, as he murmured a greeting. "I've heard it was the two of you who convinced him to leave Shinra, after that last mission, but I was hoping I might finally get the story."

Sephiroth exchanged glances with Vincent, who shrugged, leaving it to him. It was his story to tell, if he chose, and of all people, he had the chance to tell it to one of the Cetra. It almost felt like a chance for confession.

He wondered how she would judge him, and if, when all was said and done, he might be able to learn something from her after all.

"Are you sure you want to hear it?" Sephiroth asked her. "It's... complicated, and I don't feature as the hero Zack has apparently made me out to be."

"Really, Seph?" said Zack, looking at him in surprise.

"I appreciate you protecting my privacy," he said, "but someone so important to you shouldn't be left in the dark."

"I didn't realize it would be such a big deal," said Aeris, looking between them with wide eyes. "But I'm up for it if you are."

"Very well then," said Sephiroth, and as he began, he watched her face for the realization of why he had chosen to share this with her.

He didn't think Zack knew about her, and Vincent couldn't have realized. If there was one tiny thing he had in common with a true member of the Cetra, it was knowing what it was like to live with the secret of Otherness.

There were worse things, Sephiroth could tell her. There were worse things to be, and still there would be some kind fools who would forgive it.

[](https://www.yinza.com/Artwork/Fanwork/FF/They-Were-Monsters-Epilogue.png)


End file.
